Abstract/Summary

Background:

Closely echoing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals call upon State Parties to ensure the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society, including access to information. As part of its mandates, UNESCO contributes to the implementation of the CRPD, specifically prioritising Article 9 on Accessibility; Article 21 on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information; Article 24 on Education; Article 30 on Participation in Cultural Life, Recreation, Leisure and Sport, and Article 31 on International Cooperation.

This commitment extends to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as exemplified by UNESCO’s active participation in the UN Interagency Support Group on the CRPD and the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy. UNESCO is also the UN custodian agency for the global monitoring of SDG Indicator 16.10.2 which tracks progress on the number of countries that adopt and implement legal guarantees for public access to information.

As a UN Member State that ratified the CRPD, Cambodia is obliged to help promote the right to access information for persons with disabilities. However, to what extent persons with disabilities in Cambodia have realised these rights warrants further exploration.

In response to this, a joint initiative of the UNPRPD with local partners and UN agencies, including UNESCO, launched the UN Joint Project “Accelerating Disability Rights in Cambodia” dedicated to enhancing disability rights in Cambodia. This research, part of a combined effort, provided a comprehensive analysis of the current state of information accessibility among persons with different types and severity of disabilities in Cambodia. It captured different angles of the issues from the status of the legal framework to the progress of its implementation as well as the current accessible information, hindering factors that persons with disabilities faced, and other types of information that they needed.

The study implemented an explanatory sequential design of mixed methods in which the findings from the 2021-22 Cambodia Demographic Health Survey (CDHS) were triangulated and substantiated with insights from the mapping review of 18 policies and 61 interviews. The interviews ranged from focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and key informant interviews with persons with different types of disabilities (difficulty in seeing, hearing, communicating, walking or climbing, remembering or concentrating, and self-care), ministries, development partners, and NGOs or Organisations for Persons with Disabilities (OPDs). The interviews were conducted across five different locations in Cambodia namely: Phnom Penh, Kampong Chnang, Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, Tboung Khmom, and Ratanakiri.

Findings:

Demography

• About 3.44 million people or 24.4% of the Cambodian population aged 5 years and above reported having some degree of disability.
• Those with disabilities tended to be older, female, and live in rural areas. Difficulty in self-care and communication was the most common disability amongst children and youth aged between 5-14 years, while difficulty in seeing, walking/climbing, and remembering/concentrating increased as people aged.
• Education: Persons with disabilities were more likely to have never gone to school than people without disabilities. Only about 25% of them finished primary school and 6% finished secondary school or higher.
• Employment: Unpaid work was more common among persons with disabilities. Men had a higher work participation rate than women, but both genders with severe disabilities were much less likely to work and have paid jobs.
• Health: Persons with disabilities were more likely to have poor health and less access to clean water and sanitation services. They were 15% more likely to be in poor health than persons without disabilities.

Status of policies and practices

• To date, there remained no specific law or legal framework in Cambodia addressing access to information specifically for persons with disabilities. Existing policies had little content related to the issue, and they were brief and vague in nature.
• Since there were many loopholes in the current policies related to access to information for persons with disabilities, this, inarguably, was what might have led to shortcomings in the effectiveness of the policy’s implementations.

Status of access to information

Information related to society and culture was what persons with different types and severity of disabilities received the most, followed consecutively by information related to economics, healthcare, politics, and education. These types of information were related to what was perceived to be disseminated by the RGC, DPs, NGOs, and OPDs. However, there were substantial differences in the extent of accessibility information specifically developed for, and shared with, persons with disabilities. The lowest access to information was observed among females who had multiple disabilities, were of old age, had poor economic situations, low education levels, were living in rural areas, and/or being of indigenous descent.

There were four major modes of communication that persons with disabilities used to access different types of information in their daily lives: agents, mass media (hardware and digital platforms), events, and Information Education Communication (IEC) materials. There was not much difference in the mode of access to information between persons with disabilities and information providers (RGC, DP, OPD, or NGO). Nonetheless, the number of communication modes to access and share information did not necessarily imply their appropriateness to make information accessible to different kinds of disabilities.

Three major factors were observed to hinder persons with disabilities from fully accessing the information that they needed. External factors were the most persistent issues. These were often rooted in the limited accessible products and technologies, support received from surrounding relationships, attitudinal and service-related barriers, and the poor condition of the natural and built environment in which persons with disabilities lived. The intersection between age, type, number, and severity of disabilities, and chronic health conditions were factors that were also observed to impede the opportunities for persons with disabilities to access information. Lastly, the lack of motivation and confidence to access information by persons with disabilities themselves could also significantly hinder the process of accessing information effectively.

Regardless of the current accessible information and different access modes, persons with disabilities expressed a demand for seven other types of information. These included information related to economics, education and training, health services, other public services, social and culture, any information related to persons with disabilities, and environmental information. 

Recommendations:

• Review the development of the Law on Access to Information to align with the principles stated in Article 9 and Article 21 of the CRPD.
• Expedite the enactment of the Law on Access to Information.
• Develop and implement the National Guidelines on Accessibility of Information.
• Establish a specialised oversight body and network with a formal structure and adequate resource allocation.
• Create a standard for monitoring, implementing, and reporting of access to information and information accessibility. 
• Promote capacity-building and awareness raising on disability inclusion, information accessibility, and digital and media literacy across national, sub-national, and local levels. 

Link to the Research Report: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000391858.locale=en