Senator, the Hon Bob Carr
Foreign Minister
R.G. Casey Building
John McEwen Crescent
Barton, ACT 0221
28th
March 2013
Dear Senator Carr
Following on from my letter to you
dated 11th March.
On the AusAID website is to be found
the following:
“The Australian public and the recipients of Australian
aid have a right to know that Australian aid funds are spent effectively,
achieve real results and help people to overcome poverty.”
Citipointe church is not, to
the best of my knowledge, a recipient of AusAID monies. However ‘Hagar’ is. One
of the young women in my documentary CHANTI’S WORLD lived in a Hagar refuge for
four years and made certain claims about the organization that I am currently
trying to get a response to from Hagar.
“With good information, tax payers and aid recipients can
hold governments accountable and the risk of corruption is reduced. The
Australian government is committed to improving the transparency of the
Australian aid program…
To give effect to this commitment AusAID will:
- be transparent about Australia’s international
development programs.”
In the interests of
transparency, I quote here what I have written to the CEO of ‘Hagar’ on 23rd.
March:
Dear Kate
The recent publicity
surrounding Tim Mathieson's forthcoming initiative to raise money for Hagar
with his 13th April motor cycle ride from Kirribilly House in Sydney
to The Lodge in Canberra has aroused my curiosity.
I am a filmmaker working in Cambodia on a documentary entitled
CHANTI’S WORLD, for which filming is almost completed. CHANTI’S WORLD is, in
part, a record of the life of one young woman growing up on the streets of
Phnom Penh over a period of 18 years – from age 9 to age 27. It is also about
other poor families I have got to know over the years and the world they live
in, including one family living and working, until a few years ago, in the
Phnom Penh rubbish dump.
One young woman in CHANTI’S WORLD, whose family I have known for
close to a decade, was resident in a Hagar refuge for four years. She has made
certain comments and observations about Hagar on film – most particularly in
relation to her access to her parents during those four years.
As I am sure you are aware, not everything in Cambodia is as it
appears to be. It is not always easy to separate truth from fiction designed,
by the speaker, to achieve a particular end.
For both legal and ethical reasons it is imperative that CHANTI’S
WORLD be factually accurate and I would
like here to extend an invitation to Hagar to have a representative of the
organization appear in my documentary to present Hagar’s thoughts and feelings
about modern day ‘slavery’ and the efforts Hagar puts into reintegration of
those in the NGO’s care back into their families and communities.
Hagar’s responses to my questions would help me clarify whether
what this young woman has told me on film is true or not and for Hagar to
present an alternative point of view to the claims she makes…
best wishes
Kate Kennedy got back to me
almost immediately. She was not well but passed my query on to Talmage Payne,
who wanted to know more:
Dear Talmage
The young woman in question
claims that during her four years with Hagar she was only allowed to see her
family for two hours each year and that the same applied for all the other
girls at Hagar.
From what she said I got the
impression that the two hours per annum limit for family visits was Hagar
policy and I would just like to get this clarified.
She told me also that Hagar
forced her to go to church (she named the church) despite her being a Buddhist
and not wishing to become a Christian.
cheers
Talmage’s response was
swift:
James,
If its true its
unfortunate and an apology is warrented. Despite good intentions we make
mistakes sometimes and need to set things right.
But neither of the issues
raised is consistent with our policies, practices or the experience of other
clients. There are extreme cases where access to the parents is severely
limited or that re-integration to some sort of a kinship relationship is not
eventually possible. But its rare.
But we can't engage a
conversation with a third party about a specific client without their consent
and them being of age to consent.
We can provide publicly available information on our policies.
If you're in PNP we can catch up for coffee sometime.
You're project sounds interesting.
Talmage
Hagar was, up to this point,
living up to the claims it makes on the organization’s website:
“Receiving feedback and responding to complaints is an important
way for Hagar Australia to demonstrate accountability to its supporters.
Hagar
Australia is committed to responding appropriately to feedback and complaints
about the organisation’s work or practices.
I wrote back to Talmage:
Dear Talmage
After 18 years experience
with Cambodia I have learnt to take everything I am told with a
grain of salt. I have been lied to many times and am reminded of
what I was told by an American man married to a Cambodian woman when first I
came here in 1995: "All Cambodians lie all the time. They don’t do it to
hurt you but to help themselves."
Whilst I do not believe that
all Cambodians lie all the time I do keep this in the back of my mind -
especially when it comes to poor people who may want to get me to part with
some of my (limited) money.
Here is what this young
woman told me:
At age 15 she was deemed to
be 'at risk' and was taken into care by Hagar. I have known her
family well since 2007 and have seen no
indication that her parents
(who have three other younger daughters) are anything other than hard-working
poor people. This young woman was NOT a victim of Human Trafficking.
Whilst she was with Hagar,
she claims, she was only allowed to see her family once a year for two hours.
She claims that this was the case for all the girls in Hagar she knew. From
what she said such limited visiting rights seemed (and I stress 'seemed') to be
official Hagar policy.
When she turned 19 Hagar
gave her 20 pounds of rice, sent her on her way and have provide her with no
assistance since that time or shown any interest in her welfare. This is what
she claims.
She claims also that she was
forced by Hagar to attend Christian services despite her being a
Buddhist.
Could you clarify just what
Hagar's policy is regarding the visiting rights of children with
their families? Do children and their families have regular access to each
other? If so, how often?
And could this young woman
be right in saying that when she turned 19 and was provided with a 20 pound
sack of rice as a parting gift that Hagar took no further interest in her
welfare?
I did not receive a response
from Talmage to this email and so, a couple of days later, followed it up with:
Dear Kate and Talmage
I wonder if you could
provide me with “publicly available information on our policies” in relation to
the visitation rights of children in the care of Hagar with their parents. At
present I have a quite definitive statement from a former Hagar resident that
despite have never been a victim of Human Trafficking or at risk of being trafficked
by her parents she was allowed to see her parents only once a year for 2 hours.
Is this possible in terms of Hagar policy? She claims that the two hours per
year visitation right applied to all of the girls she was in care with. Is this
possible or, to be more precise, is it Hagar policy that such visits are
severely limited. This young woman claims that Hagar gave her no choice but to
take part
in Citipointe church
activities. Is this possible? Indeed, is it the case that all in Hagar’s
care must take part in Christian activities despite their being Buddhists?
Finally, this young woman claims that when she reached the age of 19 she was
sent back into the world with nothing other than a certain facility with the
English language and a 20 pound bag of rice and that since that time Hagar has
shown no interest at all in her welfare.
If this young woman has spun
me a yarn, for whatever reason, I would like to know this before including what
she has told me in my documentary.
best wishes
I did not receive a response
from Kate Kennedy or Talmage Payne to this last email, so tried again a few
days later:
Dear Kate and Talmage
You do have written, on the Hagar website:
“Receiving feedback and responding to complaints is an important
way for Hagar Australia to demonstrate accountability to its supporters. Hagar
Australia is committed to responding appropriately to feedback and complaints
about the organisation’s work or practices.”
My previous emails have not constituted a complaint but merely a
request for information - without which I have only the young woman's account
of her experience of Hagar.
Without knowing what Hagar's policies are vis a vis the
opportunities that parents of children in Hagar's care have to see their
children, this young woman's account will go unchallenged.
cheers
My last email to Hagar read:
Dear Kate and Talmage
In the interests of
accountability and transparency, both of which are espoused by Hagar, could you
please let me know what Hagar's policies are regarding families and children's
visitation rights with each other? Are they limited to two hours per year as a
matter of policy? If they are not, can you let me know how often girls in
Hagar's care get to see their families?
best wishes
I received no response. The
trail has gone dead! Like Citipointe, Hagar has decided that the best way to
deal with questions such as the ones I have asked is to ignore them. The
presumption, I presume, is that as a mere filmmaker and blogger I can be safely
ignored. We shall see!
On the AusAID website can also be
found the following as an objective:
(To) publish detailed
information on AusAID’s work – our policies, plans, processes, the results of
Australian aid activities and our evaluations – on AusAID’s website to explain
where Australia’s money is spent and its impact on reducing poverty.
Welcome public feedback to
help us further improve the effectiveness, efficiency and transparency of the
aid program and achieve better value for money.
I cannot find, anywhere on
the AusAID website any information regarding how much of Australian tax-payer
money has been given to ‘Hagar’ or regarding how effective ‘Hagar’ has been in
its activities.
In the interests of
providing feedback, please note the following:
For 18 years I have been
documenting the lives of various families in Cambodia. One of these families
had a 15 year old daughter who spent four years living in a ‘Hagar’ refuge. She
was not a victim of Human Trafficking but was deemed by ‘Hagar’ to be ‘at risk’. I know this family
well and have seen no evidence at all that this young woman was at risk of
either prostituting herself or of being sold into prostitution by her parents.
That I have seen no evidence does not, of course, mean that there is no evidence.
However, if there is evidence, is ‘Hagar’ under any obligation to share it with
AusAID – a body that is distributing Australian tax-payer dollars to help poor
Cambodian families such as the one this young woman is a part of? (It is worth
noting that this young woman, in March 2013, has younger sisters working on the
streets of Phnom Penh (and hence ‘at risk’) in order to supplement the family’s
meagre income and to pay their school fees. Why is Hagar not helping these
young girls? Why are no recipients of AusAID helping these young girls and
dozens of others like them?)
Does AusAID require of NGOs
such as Hagar that they provide evidence that the girls in their care that are
deemed to be ‘at risk’ are in fact at risk and are not merely the daughters of
poor parents who have been conned into placing their thumb prints on a document
that they are then told is a ‘contract’ they have entered into with the NGO?
Hagar could, for instance, be obliged by AusAID to provide a statutory
declaration for each girl in its care stating what the circumstances were (are)
that led them to be in care and what visitation rights the children had to
their parents and vice versa. And AusAID could then check with a small sample
of parents to discover if their experience as the recipients of Australian aid
matches what Hagar claims to be their experience. If there is no mechanism
whereby consumers of aid can feed back directly to AusAID, how can AusAID ever
be sure what impacts Australian aid is having on the lives of the very poor
people the aid is supposedly helping? In the case of the young woman in
question, AusAID to Hagar has resulted in her seeing her parents and family only
four times in four years – for two hours each time. It has resulted in her being forced to attend
Christian services run by Citipointe church. And it resulted in her being
effectively denied any further assistance from AusAID when she turned 19.
Does AusAID believe that
allowing girls only two hours with their families per annum is appropriate
given ‘Hagar’s’ stated aim of reintegrating the girls back into their families
and communities? Does AusAID believe it appropriate that Australian tax-dollars
are being used to force young Cambodian Buddhists to become Citipointe church
Christians?
It is possible that what
this young woman has told me, on film, is incorrect. It is possible that all
the others who have told me (though not yet on film) that children in Hagar’s
care are alienated from their families, their communities, their Buddhist faith
and their Cambodian culture are all playing fast and loose with the truth. It
may be that this young woman is not telling the truth when she states that she
was forced, despite being a Buddhist, to attend church services organized by
Citipointe church. In the absence of a response from, Hagar to my questions,
how am I to know precisely where the truth lies? Does AusAID? Does AusAID care?
Given what AusAID writes
about transparency and accountability on its website, does AusAID ever ask the
kinds of questions I have asked of Hagar – an NGO funded, in part, by the
Australian tax-payer? If AusAID does ask such questions, am I, as a member of
the media, allowed to know what the answers are? If AusAID does not ask such
questions, how can Australians know whether their tax dollars are being spent
to help poor families become self-sustaining or to institutionalize them, deny
them access to their families (other than for 2 hours a year) and force them to
become Christians – only to turf them back out onto the street when they turn
18 or 19 and no longer serve the fund-raising role they can play when young and
cute and likely to open the hearts and wallets of donors and sponsors?
If what the young Cambodian
woman has told me is true (and if not, why has Hagar not contradicted her
claims?) there is a problem at the heart of AusAID – a lack of the capacity to
deal with feedback from aid recipients. Without transparency and accountability
on the part of organizations such as Hagar, the NGO can do pretty much what it
likes – even if this results in the breaking up of Cambodian families in a way
that is disturbingly similar to what occurred in Australia and which we now, as
a nation, feel sufficiently ashamed of to have issued a public apology.
I believe that the questions
raised in this and my letter of 11th Feb are important and require
answers if AusAID is to remain true to its commitment to transparency and
accountability.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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