It can be hard to understand why Cambodia receives so much aid when it is so clear that so much of it is misappropriated and when the country shows itself to be so uncommitted to making life better for anyone other than the top few percent. n fact, human rights and corruption levels have reportedly worsened. It was hard to see this spelled out in black and white in this article as a fact of nothing more than American politics (it looks only at America as a source of aid), as Cambodia (and all its people) is reduced simply to a pawn in the battle for power between the U.S. and China.
Phnom Penh has changed a lot in the last few years - more shopping malls, more restaurants and coffee shops, more high rise apartment blocks, more cars, more goods, even Burger King! But what's also changed is the gulf between the rich and the poor - it gets wider and wider. And what hasn't changed is public services - health care, education, access to electricity or sanitation, roads, law enforcement. Things I used to (and to a lesser extent still do) take for granted.
Even between the rich and the emerging middle class, many of whom, with the expendable income to think about choice but without choices available to them in Cambodia, see no option but to leave the country, especially when they think about how to educate their children. And that is a sure barrier to long term change.
Phnom Penh has changed a lot in the last few years - more shopping malls, more restaurants and coffee shops, more high rise apartment blocks, more cars, more goods, even Burger King! But what's also changed is the gulf between the rich and the poor - it gets wider and wider. And what hasn't changed is public services - health care, education, access to electricity or sanitation, roads, law enforcement. Things I used to (and to a lesser extent still do) take for granted.
Even between the rich and the emerging middle class, many of whom, with the expendable income to think about choice but without choices available to them in Cambodia, see no option but to leave the country, especially when they think about how to educate their children. And that is a sure barrier to long term change.