The 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership

Violence against women knows no one place or social condition, alas. But it flourishes in times of upheaval and great social change, as in Cambodia during its long painful recovery from war and holocaust. Oung Chanthol, executive director of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center (CWCC), wants to make her country a safer place for women.

Born in Kampot, Cambodia in 1967, Oung lost her father to the Khmer Rouge and spent many years of her youth in a Thai refugee camp. There she studied law and public administration and led a job-training program for widows. Returning home in 1992 under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), she worked as an interpreter and joined a human rights task force. Here she became acquainted with the magnitude of sex trafficking and other gender-related crimes in Cambodia. Following a period of study at Columbia University and an assignment with the Cambodia office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, she decided to act. With the support of friends and of Terre des Hommes (Germany and the Netherlands) she founded CWCC in 1997.

Prostitution has a long history in Cambodia. But it rose dramatically during the UNTAC transition and afterwards. By 1994, in Phnom Penh alone, some 17,000 women and girls were involved, most of them sold or tricked into prostitution and kept in virtual servitude. Thousands more were being trafficked to Thailand to be prostitutes, maids, and beggars. Profits from this cruel trade were shared by traffickers and brothel owners and by the goons, police, and politicians who protected them. For the women, there was no recourse.

It was the same for victims of rape and domestic violence, crimes the Cambodian police barely acknowledged and acted upon capriciously, if at all. Many women endured such an assault fatalistically, fearing they had somehow brought it upon themselves-a view Cambodian society tended to uphold.

Oung moved her new organization into action quickly. CWCC set up confidential shelters for women rescued from brothels and abusive husbands. It gave legal assistance to victims of rape, trafficking, and domestic abuse and helped them understand their rights. It investigated cases of gender violence of all kinds and prodded the police to intervene and make arrests. It provided medical care and counseling, giving comfort to hundreds of women who, before CWCC, had no one to talk to about their fear, shame, and depression. And it trained women in literacy, health, and livelihood skills and helped them find jobs. Thousands of women have now received such assistance from CWCC.

By painstakingly documenting hundreds of cases of rape, trafficking, and domestic abuse, Oung has learned that these crimes are abetted by pervasive ignorance. CWCC therefore mounts awareness campaigns to tell people that sex trafficking is illegal and should be deterred. It educates local authorities and the police. It broadcasts effective radio and TV messages and provides authoritative data to journalists; Oung herself speaks bluntly to the media. With its partners in Cambodia's growing civil society, it is carrying the dialogue about women's rights to the highest levels of government.

At CWCC, the future is charted at meetings where Oung and her twenty-five staff members analyze problems and brainstorm about solutions. There are many problems. In Cambodia, old habits die hard and the wheels of justice grind slowly. Moreover, CWCC's work is inherently dangerous, provoking the wrath of brothel owners, angry husbands, police, and politicians.

Oung and her colleagues are accustomed to this. Soft-spoken but passionate, thirty-four-year-old Oung shrugs off the dangers and, when frustration mounts, gathers her staff to talk things through. And the work goes on.

In electing Oung Chanthol to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes her rising courageously to confront and eliminate sex trafficking and gender violence in Cambodia.