Cambodia: The High Cost of Closure

With a $170 million price tag, the genocide trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders could be imperiled for lack of donor funds

Former Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea attends a verdict at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh on March 20, 2008. Mak Remissa/AFP/Getty Images

by Susan Postlewaite

Dressed in a khaki shirt and slumped in his chair, eyes closed as the judges read the proceedings, the frail and white-haired "Brother No. 2" doesn't look the part of a mastermind of the 1970s reign of terror in Cambodia. Arrested at home near the Thai border last September, 82-year-old Nuon Chea is the top-ranking Khmer Rouge official to face trial for his role in the Cambodian genocide. But with his health deteriorating, the court worries he may die before the trial's conclusion. So haste is of the essence.

That's one factor that international aid donors must consider when deciding whether to foot the $170 million bill for the U.N.-sponsored trials of Nuon Chea and four other former Khmer Rouge officials. Trying them is proving far more costly than organizers had planned. The court's budget, originally $53 million for three years, has ballooned to $170 million for five years. And after a year and a half of operations, the hybrid court (run by both the U.N. and the Cambodian government) is running out of money. The Cambodian side has announced it runs out of funds in April.

Nearly 30 years after the end of the "killing fields" that left 2 million people dead, many Cambodians are wondering whether getting justice is worth the expense. Some think the trials in Cambodia are, as the former U.N. Secretary-General's representative in Cambodia Benny Widyono says, "a little too late."

Report of Overspending

But others feel that closure is necessary. "We want to see who is responsible for the killing," says Touch Vunly, a retired government soldier who now farms near Cambodia's border with Thailand, not far from the house where Khieu Samphan, who was a member of the Khmer Rouge central committee, lived before his arrest. Touch Vunly says he has no grudges, but he adds that he would like to know whether "the leaders have to take responsibility if they do wrong." In a country where criminal behavior has for years gone unpunished, that may be the argument that persuades donors that spending as much as it takes on the Khmer Rouge trials is good value.

One problem: Donors want to know what's happened to some of the money they've already pledged. A U.N. audit report found inflated salaries and overstaffing on the Cambodian side of the court and harshly criticized the court for paying Cambodian staff $3,500 to $5,300 a month—in a country where teachers and civil servants still get less than $100. The high salaries mean the court has not been able to use lower local costs to make proceedings less expensive than in places such as The Hague, Netherlands, home to the war crimes trials for the former Yugoslavia.

Donors who have funded the tribunal until now aren't saying how much more they're willing to spend. The biggest donors have been Japan ($21.6 million) and France ($3.2 million). The European Commission, Australia, Canada, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, and India have limited their contributions to a few million dollars or less, according to the court's financial statements. (The U.S. hasn't contributed anything.) The donors declined to comment on future pledges except to say they have sent questions to the U.N. about the expense. Cambodia has pledged $1.5 million cash, but says in-kind contributions would bump it to about $5 million for such things as taking care of the defendants in jail and the land for the court.

The new budget would cover expenses including more than $120,000 a year in medical costs for the five elderly defendants: Nuon Chea; Khieu Samphan; Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Duch"; and Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith. That includes round-the-clock doctor and nurse coverage at the court and an ambulance that often ferries defendants to Calmette Hospital 45 minutes away. And it also would pay for international doctor visits, particularly for Ieng Sary, the 82-year-old former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, who has heart problems.

War Crimes Trials Are Expensive

Lawyers leading the case against the Khmer Rouge officials are hopeful that a lack of funds won't shut down the court.