Assistance to Cambodia
Following the collapse of the Pol Pot regime, the PRK signed working agreements with UNICEF, ICRC, and other agencies for emergency programmes. At the same time a large-scale relief effort was set in motion to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of Cambodians who had fled into Thailand.
Faced with the extent of the destruction, donors however gave generously during this period to a broad range of emergency programmes which included essential rehabilitation components. The ICRC, UNICEF, WFP, FAO and the major NGO consortia provided a wide range of supplies from basic agricultural inputs to tractors, spare parts for industry to transport equipment, basic medical supplies to hospital equipment, pens and school notebooks to Khmer typewriters.
From 1979 to 1981 official bilateral and multilateral emergency programmes provided USD 370 million in assistance to Cambodia. NGO programmes contributed more than USD 100 million. A UN report estimates NGO expenditure by a dozen agencies at USD 2 million in 1984. By the end of the decade approximately 25 NGO's were programming about USD 15 million annually in Cambodia. Western donors, Japan, China, and the ASEAN countries complemented their policy of isolating Cambodia by offering to resettle Cambodian refugees in third countries and, once resettlement was closed as an option, by meeting the basic needs of 375,000 Cambodians in camps along the Thai- Cambodian border.
Following the formation of the Royal Government in 1993, UNDP has assisted in the preparation of the National Programme to Rehabilitate and Develop Cambodia (NPRD). It was- also agreed that a UNDP-supported Country Programme for Cambodia be prepared in order to better focus UNDP cooperation in support of the priorities of the NPRD, taking into account the increasing volume and coverage of donor assistance. The first UNDP Country Programme (1994-96) was prepared in a highly participatory manner and approved by UNDP's Executive Board in October 1994. UNDP's cooperation has thus come to concentrate on two, mutually supportive areas, namely poverty alleviation and capacity building for management of the national development and reform processes in pursuing equitable and sustainable growth.
'Sustain human development is development that not only generates economic growth but distributes its benefits equitably; that regenerates the environment rather than destroys it; that empowers people rather than marginalizes them. That gives priority to the poor enlarging their choices and opportunities, and provides for their participation in decisions affecting them.
