Licadho’s complaint against a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project was eligible for an environment and social compliance review by the UNDP’s internal compliance unit. It is related to people having suffered human rights violations by private companies that are partners with UNDP, according to the Licadho in a statement on Friday.
The UNDP’s internal compliance team determined that Licadho’s complaint was suitable for review after it submitted a complaint in March to the Social and Environmental Compliance Unit (SECU).
Licadho filed the complaint on behalf of people, who asked that their personal information and comments be kept confidential due to concerns around the retaliation and privacy.
Am Sam Ath, operations director of rights group Licadho, told CamboJA that Licadho filed the complaint with SECU to check whether the process of UNDP with private companies was in accordance with their policies.
“Our complaint is not related to companies or people, but about the UNDP process, which evaluates how they provided investment to those groups,” Sam Ath said. “[We] asked this unit [SECU] to review UNDP’s provision to the company whether it is in accordance with the SDG investment policy.”
Licadho focused on the process of recognition and providing investment from UNDP to the companies, he added, so UNDP also contributed to human rights abuses.
The complaint alleged that UNDP failed to conduct the monitoring of its environment and social policies during the creation of the “SDG Investor map for Cambodia”. The UNDP selected private-sector actors and categorized them as “partners” for the project.
But those private companies were allegedly involved in coerced land sales, forced evictions, deforestation of protection areas and indigenous lands, child labour, trafficking in persons, and other harms.
The private companies are being publicly promoted by the UN agency’s investment plan on the SDG Investor Map for Cambodia.
Through UNDP’s selection of “partners” on the SDG Investor Platform, the agency failed to comply with standards meant to safeguard “Community Health, Safety and Security”, “Displacement and Resettlement” and “Indigenous Peoples”, Licadho said.
“Concerns regarding the project were raised directly with the UNDP Cambodia country office as early as December 2022, but the UN agency failed to resolve these problems sufficiently for more than a year prior to the filing of the complaint.”
Regarding this, SECU said they just found the complaint eligible earlier this month and it will move forward with an investigation of the allegations made in the complaint.
Outreach director of Licadho, Naly Pilorge, said they want to see the investigation on the case as soon as possible and all the serious problems with the program addressed and resolved.
“The acceptance of this complaint is an important step towards ensuring that UNDP’s activities in Cambodia follow the agency’s own policies. Private-sector investment cannot come at the cost of human rights,” she said.
Naly told CamboJA News via Signal that UNDP’s lack of due diligence in selecting their partners for its SDG Investment Platform, and the claim that “no such due diligence was necessary”, poses a serious risk to Cambodians’ human rights.
She added that as a next step, the SECU will draft a terms of reference for an investigation and proceed with the inquiry into the allegations made in the complaint.
“We are hopeful that a thorough and impartial SECU investigation will help fix these issues and bring the UNDP project in compliance with its own policies.”
UNDP did not immediately respond to the CamboJA News reporter’s question but noted that they will respond within six working days.
