Law and judiciary

The Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (the Association) is a non-governmental institution for Cambodia’s lawyers.  In keeping with Article 24 of the United Nations Basic Principle on the Role of Lawyers, the Association represents lawyers’ interests, promotes their continuing education and training, and ...

The law-making process is about making and enacting new laws or revising existing laws.In the Kingdom of Cambodia, three institutions can initiate the law-making process: any member of the National Assembly, any member of the Senate and the prime minister. 1 Most of the texts ...

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia was officially promulgated by Royal Kram on 24 September 1993. Image designed by Open Development Cambodia (ODC), 10 September 2021. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.The 1993 Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia is the supreme law of the ...

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. 1 Its role is to monitor the application of the law and punish its violation. This power is vested ...

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, ...

Criminal litigation refers to the judicial procedure held before a criminal court to resolve accusations brought against a person accused of a criminal offense. As defined in the law, “The purpose of a criminal action is to examine the existence of an offense, to prove ...

Under Cambodia’s Constitution, all Khmer citizens have equal status before the law, regardless of wealth or station.1 This promotes a political principle called the rule of law,2 an ideal that all members of a society, both the people and the State, are held equally accountable ...

Respect for strong values is the key to citizens’ trust in their courts.1 The international values recognized for judges are independence and impartiality, integrity, equality of treatment, diligence and competence. A judge cannot both decide a case and have a personal interest in its resolution. ...

Public policies are a system of laws, regulatory measures, and plans of action implemented by the government to ensure that its functions are performed predictably and consistently.1 Policies typically outline the guiding principles of an operation; meanwhile, regulations set procedural expectations. Currently, there are no ...

Legal aid is provided either by the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC), internationally funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and public interest law firms. A special legal team under the supervision of the Prime Minister, aiming to assist impoverished women, particularly those in prison, ...

National Assembly of Cambodia. Photo by Sorn Seang Heng, taken on 12 June 2010. Licensed under CC-BY 2.0.With a constitution written a little more than 20 years ago, the current rule of law in Cambodia is relatively new, and continues to be shaped by many ...