Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) is one of Cambodia’s leading labor rights organizations. On 28 June 2024, the Ministry of Interior requested that the National Audit Authority of Cambodia conduct an audit of CENTRAL and a “national security” audit was launched on 15 July 2024. The audit request came just weeks after CENTRAL published a report assessing the effectiveness of Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a joint program between the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank aimed at improving working conditions in the garment sector by assessing the compliance of 660 participating factories with international labor standards.  CENTRAL’s report found evidence that BFC was failing to identify freedom of association violations in participating factories and made several recommendations to improve BFC’s program, including by making their compliance reports available to workers and providing a grievance mechanism to allow workers to contest its findings.  

The decision to launch a national security audit was preceded by escalating actions by government-aligned unions, including protests outside CENTRAL’s offices, legal complaints against CENTRAL’s staff, and petitions to the Cambodian government to investigate CENTRAL. The audit, which is clearly a response to CENTRAL’s report on the BFC project, has been roundly condemned by the American Apparel and Footwear Association and the Fair Labor Association (representing the apparel brands that source from Cambodia’s factories), United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and national and international civil society organizations.