International laws and treaties

Prime Minister Hun Sen is due on Saturday to emphasise the key role of “multilateralism for global peace” as well as the emerging “unilateral sanction” being a threat to international law at the United Nations General Assembly. ...

A total of 110 National Assembly members on Monday convened to review and unanimously approve seven draft laws in a historic session that saw the Kingdom ratify the UN’s Convention on Sea Law (Unclos). The Unclos, dated December 10, 1982, “lays down a comprehensive regime ...

The Competition Law, a piece of legislation deemed crucial in the digital economy, will be completed early next year, Commerce Minister Pan Sorasak said yesterday. ...

Keep out of Cambodia’s internal affairs.This was the message delivered yesterday by Cambodia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Prak Sokhonn to country director for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Wan-Hea Lee at a meeting to discuss cooperation. ...

The United Nations is standing behind Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) country representative Wan-Hea Lee after a letter signed by Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon accused her of failing to respect Cambodia’s sovereignty.​ ...

Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn on Friday warned the UN’s Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia against criticizing government decisions, deeming it disrespectful to the nation’s sovereignty. ...

The Cambodian Youth Party (CYP) is urging the public to join a mass demonstration on October 10 against Vietnam, due to what they say is a continued encroachment by the neighboring country on Cambodian territory through two settlements currently under construction. In an announcement sent out ...

A new paper from the International Criminal Court laying out a shift in focus to crimes linked to environmental destruction and the unlawful dispossession of land has rekindled the debate over whether the court will launch an investigation into a case highlighting land-grabbing in Cambodia. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen today leads a delegation of high-level officials to Laos for the start of the 29th ASEAN Summit. The event is considered of special import as it comes in the wake of a July international court ruling that determined the so-called “nine-dash line” ...

Cambodian officials have not informed Russian authorities about the arrest of a wanted embezzler in Sihanoukville last month, despite apprehending him at their request, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday. ...

Cambodia and Singapore have deposited their respective instruments of ratification for the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP) with ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh, it was learned. ...

Some 3,000 Vietnamese women and children were suspected to have been trafficked to Laos and Cambodia in 2015, the Tuoi tre (Youth) newspaper reported.The women were sold into prostitution and children were forced into hard physical labor. ...

Seventeen ethnic Montagnard Christians who fled Vietnam earlier this year to seek refuge from alleged persecution voluntarily returned home on Tuesday, discouraged after waiting for more than three months to be granted refugee status, a rights advocate and United Nations spokesperson said. ...

Heads of state from nearly 80 countries are heading to Paris (November 30-December 11) to craft a global climate change agreement. The new accord will replace the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change that expired in 2012. ...

The International Criminal Court in the Hague has issued a statement acknowledging the work of civil society organizations in helping maintain international standards of justice. In 2014 and the first quarter of 2015, some 60,000 people were affected by land grabs, according to a report ...

The Cambodian government has extended the deadline for the deportation of 13 ethnic Montagnard Christians who have obtained refugee status in the Southeast Asian nation if they do not find a third country in which to permanently settle by next January, prompting criticism from a ...

Two dozen ethnic Montagnard Christians who fled Vietnam earlier this year to seek refuge in Cambodia from alleged persecution have volunteered to return home, frustrated with long waits and the dim prospects of being granted asylum, a police official and rights activist in northeastern Cambodia ...

Nine Vietnamese Montagnards who are seeking the protection of the United Nations refugee office in Cambodia’s capital said Monday that they fled their homeland last month because of political persecution, and expressed concern about possible deportation by Cambodian authorities. ...

Environmental groups yesterday urged the government to seek greater legal clarity among the Mekong River countries about how they should share its resources. ...

Cambodia declared Tuesday that the Montagnards who have entered the country illegally, claiming to flee repression in Vietnam are economic, not political, refugees, because they were trafficked into the nation, a government spokesman said. ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy says the article of the constitution that demarcates Cambodia’s borders could be amended, for use of an older, more accurate map. ...

Cambodian border experts say the government should nullify treaties it has with Vietnam and begin again border demarcation under the 1991 Paris Peace Accords. ...

The government will not accept more Montagnard asylum seekers from Vietnam because it lacks the resources to do so and does not want to provoke Hanoi, Council of Ministers’ Phay Siphan told Khmer Times yesterday. ...

Judicial police ignored an arrest warrant for former Khmer Rouge navy commander and accused war criminal Meas Muth, putting the government in breach of the rules of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, declassified documents released by the tribunal Wednesday show. ...