36. NGOs and the Law

NGO or Non Governmental Organizations are now subjected to new Law that is now in draft form. The draft was circulated in the NGOs circle since December last year. The Ministry seeks for input and lately was in the hands of an official from the US Department of State now visiting Cambodia. His initial comment is that it is not the time for this law yet, comment that is not well received by the Ministy of Interior, as reported in the Phnom Penh Post today (Refer to an older post on this Blog). We will see how far it will go. When I was in Cambodia, friends asked me what I think. I told them that you work with it, live with it, so you look at it and you decide.
    In America, even though I have a job with the State government, in a side I worked all the time with NGOs know here as Non Profit Organizations (NPO). I formed the first one in 1976 the Cambodian Association of Washington that was transformed later into few local organizations. Later I help form many other organizations as part of my job, locally and at the national level. In America, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his book "Democracy in America" long time ago that "Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all typees of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which they all take part, but others of a thousand different types - religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute..." In America the State law of the NPOs is simple but still required organizers to bear responsible in the functioning of their organization. Beside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) always have an eye on them, from the taxation side.
    In the Cambodian draft law - it may change now - I saw some problems in the reporting and planning part of it. It is too difficult to do. Anyway, if this NGO Law is passed, now or later, there should be an institute just to teach people in the NGOs community how to comply with it.