CEDAW Monitoring Report 2022
2022 brought a continuation of many of the challenges documented by NGOCEDAW and its partners in previous monitoring reports. It also saw a concerning escalation of the crackdowns on peaceful women-led strikes, the most prominent case remaining that of the NagaWorld casino which stands accused of disproportionately dismissing pregnant and nursing women, as well as women unionists (Sections 1.6; 3.1).
New research emerged addressing several issues, from government, INGO, civil society, and academic sources. For instance, local women’s rights NGO Women Peace Makers published research documenting the human rights challenges faced by Indigenous and Ethnic Minority women and girls in Cambodia (Section 2). This research highlighted urgent issues pertaining to statelessness that are shown to have been inadequately addressed by the state despite calls by the CEDAW Committee to prioritize the facilitation of access to identity documentation and birth registration.
Journalists, too, published important new evidence pertaining to violations of women’s rights in 2022. For instance, independent media in Cambodia investigated the impacts of an alarming rise in scam compounds and modern slavery in the country (Section 1.2), while other outlets followed up with women who continue to be affected by the surrogacy crackdown imposed by the Cambodian government during the late 2010s (Section 6).
While lockdown measures were lifted, the economic fallout from the pandemic continued throughout 2022, coupled with alarming new evidence showing the present-day impacts of climate change on women garment workers (Section 3.2). Finally, a mid-year commune election failed to bring about more than a 0.2% increase in women councilors from the previous mandate in 2017 (Section 5).
This report is a summary of key concerns and events which occurred in the calendar year 2022. It does not attempt to comprehensively address all issues facing women, girls, and non-binary persons living in Cambodia, but rather focuses on those which were new or of particular concern in 2022.