A six-month suspension has been lifted, and now a new body will streamline
legal procedures
A NEW organisation to regulate foreign marriages
has been created following the lifting of a six-month suspension of such
unions in November, officials say.
The suspension was enacted in April amid concerns over an explosion in the
number of brokered unions involving poor, uneducated women. It followed the
release of an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) report
highlighting the plight of an increasing number of Cambodian brides migrating
to South Korea in marriages hastily arranged by brokers who make large
profits. Some 1,759 marriage visas were issued by South Korea in 2007, up
from just 72 in 2004, the report said.
The new organisation - the Association for People Protection (APP) - was
licensed by the Ministry of Interior on December 12 to provide "free
consultations on marriages to foreigners", an APP statement said.
The organisation has the stated aim of protecting Cambodian overseas
migrants, especially women marrying foreigners, Ky Sina, president of APP,
was quoted as saying in the December 30 statement.
"The duty of the association is to help people applying for passports
and visas to do this legally. Any foreigner who wants to marry a Cambodian
woman will have to become a member of APP," said the statement, without
clarifying whether membership fees would be charged.
Preventing spousal abuse
APP will also act as a mediator "to facilitate [dialogue] and find
lawyers for both husband and wife" if they have problems later in the
marriage.
Koy Koung, an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
said that currently, the burden of responsibility for preventing abusive
foreign marriages falls on his ministry and the Ministry of Interior, which
together carry out background checks on foreigners to establish whether they
have a criminal record. The new organisation will take on this
responsibility, he said.
"We have received the sub-decree [setting up APP] already. We are
only waiting for the Ministry of Interior to finalise some details,"
said Ten Borany, deputy director of the anti-human trafficking department of
the Ministry of Interior.
Ten Borany said the government has recently cracked down on
marriage-brokering companies, rescinding their licences, as they suspected
them of facilitating human trafficking by arranging exploitative marriages.
By centralising and streamlining the procedures for legalising a
Cambodian-foreigner marriage, the APP will help prevent human trafficking, he
said.
In April, the government said that while no systematic exploitation was
uncovered in brokering companies then operating in the Kingdom, several cases
of abuse did raise a red flag - prompting the marriage suspension, You Ay, a
secretary of state with the Women's Affairs Ministry told AFP at the time.
"All people have a right to marry who they want, despite any differences
in nationality, because in the law we cannot allow discrimination against
different nationals," said Ly Vichuta, director of local NGO Legal
Support for Children and Women.
Ly Vichuta said while some foreigners marrying Cambodians went through the
correct channels to legalise their unions, others did not bother and used
fake or dubious documents to obtain a visa for their spouses.
"Instances of domestic violence or sexual abuse are harder to identify
and assist if the marriage was not legally registered," she said.
She said that the new organisation will make it easier to help Cambodians
whose foreign marriages run into difficulties, as they will all have been
married legally and documented through the PPA.
Thuy Sophorn, who has been trying to marry her Malaysian boyfriend for over a
year, said that she was delighted the law on foreign marriage had been
clarified.
"The new law to allow foreign marriage is very good, and it can protect
us from being cheated in marriage. I hope it will protect Cambodian women,"
she said.
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