Excerpts from a series of 3 educational films on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia. The films, commissioned by the Asia International Justice Initiative (AIJI) with funds provided by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office through the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, describe the reasons for the establishment of the tribunal to a general audience in Cambodia. The films have been shown on Cambodian television as well as to live audiences in cities and villages throughout the country.
Building upon five years of experience of the War Crimes Studies Center in trial monitoring in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Rwanda, and Indonesia, AIJI is establishing a regionally-based monitoring program for the upcoming Khmer Rouge trials. In addition to a permanent AIJI monitor, the monitoring team will include young lawyers and advanced law students from China, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Cambodia. The goals of the program are:
1. to widen public awareness of the ECCC in the region;
2. to train young lawyers by giving them the experience of working at an international tribunal and engaging in monitoring and legal analysis under expert supervision;
3. to develop a regional network of young human rights lawyers.
The project is working with educational, professional, and non-government organizations in these countries to provide monitors and identify potential funding sources for their participation. AIJI will train and supervise the monitors, and manage the program. Individual monitors will write reports on the proceedings for dissemination in their countries and posting on the web. The team will also produce analytical assessments of the trials.
AIJI has also engaged several international partners in this program and is currently developing relationships with the University of Marburg, Bucerius Law School, the University of Zurich, and the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who have all agreed in-principle to join the program.
