Water resources
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Geographically, Cambodia is rich in rivers and water bodies. These water resources play an important role in economic and social development, particularly in agriculture, industry, environmental protection and tourism sectors. ...
Civil and commercial litigation
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Since 1993, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has been working to reform the country’s legal framework, and in particular the application of justice, to provide a clear and fixed procedural system to ensure respect for individual rights and equality before the courts.1 In theory, ...
Judiciary and courts
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The judiciary is one of the three powers, together with the executive (the Government) and legislative (the National Assembly and the Senate), that constitute the state. 37 Its role is to monitor the application of the law and punish its violation. This power is vested ...
Environment and natural resources
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Around three quarters of Cambodia’s population depend on agriculture, forest products and fisheries for their livelihoods, so the management of the environment and natural resources is of great importance. Deforestation has occurred on a large scale. Cambodia lost six percent of its remaining primary forest ...
Water and sanitation
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Children in Moung district, Battambang province, wash their hands with soap and water. Photo by WorldFish Cambodia, taken on 08 November 2018. Licensed under (CC BY-ND 2.0).Recognized as a global crisis, the United Nations has included water and sanitation in Sustainable Development Goal 6, ensuring ...
Minerals and mineral products
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Minerals from Halpern Mineral Collection, San Francisco, Photo by Eric Hunt taken on October 21 2006. License under: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Many of Cambodia’s mineral resources are undeveloped, with most production concentrating on construction materials such as crushed stone, sand, gravel and limestone.227There is currently no ...
Extractive industries policy and administration
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Cambodia’s extractive industries have traditionally operated on a small scale, mostly mining construction materials, gold or gemstones. While commercial production of minerals or oil has yet to begin on a large scale – these products made up just 0.1% of the country’s exports in 2016239 – ...
SDG 14 Life below water
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Sustainable Development Goal 14 is primarily about the interactions of humans with the oceans. Specifically, it aims to conserve and manage the use of oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.256 A UN General Assembly call for action has been used to clearly articulate ...
Foreign investors
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Things you should know about Cambodia before investingCambodia has performed well on foreign direct investment (FDI) so far, three times better than predicted, which scored 3.6, becoming the top 25 in the world.328 The FDI reached an all-time high of 14.1% in 2012 and nearly ...
Chinese aid
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Construction of a laboratory funded by Chinese money. Photo by Michael Coghlan, taken on 10 January 2014. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0China, while once being at odds with the current government, is now Cambodia’s largest development partner. The two nations have grown increasingly close in recent ...
Business structures and legal registration
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Since the 1990s, the Cambodian economy has recorded a substantial expansion led by the tourism, manufacturing and construction sectors. One of the highest economic growth rates in the world allowed Cambodia to become a lower-middle-income country in 2015 374The country has a strategic position in ...
Land tenure and land titling
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Land registration and titling of private property has been ongoing for more than a decade. As the Cambodian government works to formally register all private property, there is a dual system of soft possessory rights to be replaced by hard ownership rights through nationally-recognized title. ...
Tourism
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The Royal Government of Cambodia has acknowledged the potential of the tourism industry as a source of Cambodia’s socio-economy growth, including job creation and poverty reduction. Tourism has been considered one of Cambodia’s key economic pillars, both international and domestic. In the early 2000s, the ...
Electricity infrastructure
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Rural energy cooperative in Cambodia. Photo by Nomade Moderne, taken on 23 March 2006. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0The electricity distributed in Cambodia is partly generated within the country and partly imported. For many years, local generation was on a relatively small scale, and was ...
Ethnic minorities and indigenous people
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According to the Kingdom of Cambodia’s 2019 general population census, the total Cambodian population is 15,552,211 (51.31% of females).491 By 2021, the population increased to 16,589,023.492 Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and other minorities also live in the country. Indigenous ethnic groups known as “Khmer Loeu” live ...
Maternal and child health
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The number of mothers who died in labour has nearly halved over four years, from 182 fatalities in 2011 to 100 in 2015.527 Deaths among children have also dropped, although they remain comparatively high, and the prevalence of underweight newborns is high compared to many ...
Mining
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The mining sector in Cambodia is mostly undeveloped, and active mining enterprises are typically small-scale quarries producing materials for construction, such as laterite, marble, granite, limestone, gravel and sand. There is no industrial-scale extraction of minerals, although many exploration licenses have been granted to ...