Cambodia

Most Cambodians consider themselves to be Khmers, descendants of the Angkor Empire that extended over much of Southeast Asia and reached its zenith between the 10th and 13th centuries. Attacks by the Thai and Cham (from present-day Vietnam) weakened the empire, ushering in a long period of decline. The king placed the country under French protection in 1863, and it became part of French Indochina in 1887. Following Japanese occupation in World War II, Cambodia gained full independence from France in 1953.

In 1975, after a seven-year struggle, communist Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh and evacuated all cities and towns. At least 1.5 million Cambodians died from execution, forced hardships, or starvation during the Khmer Rouge regime under POL POT. A 1978 Vietnamese invasion drove the Khmer Rouge into the countryside, began a 10-year Vietnamese occupation, and touched off 13 years of internecine warfare in which a coalition of Khmer Rouge, Cambodian nationalists, and royalist insurgents, with assistance from China, fought the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK).

The 1991 Paris Agreements ended the country’s civil war and mandated democratic elections, which took place in 1993 and ushered in a period of multi-party democracy with a constitutional monarchy. King Norodom SIHANOUK was reinstated as head of state, and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the royalist FUNCINPEC party formed a coalition government. Nevertheless, the power-sharing arrangement proved fractious and fragile, and in 1997, a coup led by CPP leader and former PRK prime minister HUN SEN dissolved the coalition and sidelined FUNCINPEC. Despite further attempts at coalition governance, the CPP has since remained in power through elections criticized for lacking fairness, political and judicial corruption, media control, and influence over labor unions, all of which have been enforced with violence and intimidation.

HUN SEN remained as prime minister until 2023, when he transferred power to his son, HUN MANET. HUN SEN has subsequently maintained considerable influence as the leader of the CPP and the Senate. The CPP has also placed limits on civil society, press freedom, and freedom of expression. Despite some economic growth and considerable investment from China over the past decade, Cambodia remains one of East Asia's poorest countries.

The remaining elements of the Khmer Rouge surrendered in 1999. A UN-backed special tribunal established in Cambodia in 1997 tried some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity and genocide. The tribunal concluded in 2022 with three convictions.

Cambodia is a predominantly rural country with among the most ethnically and religiously homogenous populations in Southeast Asia: more than 95% of its inhabitants are Khmer and more than 95% are Buddhist. The population’s size and age structure shrank and then rebounded during the 20 th century as a result of conflict and mass death.

During the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979 as many as 1.5 to 2 million people are estimated to have been killed or died as a result of starvation, disease, or overwork – a loss of about 25% of the population. At the same time, emigration was high, and the fertility rate sharply declined.

In the 1980s, after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, fertility nearly doubled and reached pre-Khmer Rouge levels of close to 7 children per woman, reflecting in part higher infant survival rates. The baby boom was followed by a sustained fertility decline starting in the early 1990s, eventually decreasing from 3.8 in 2000 to 2.9 in 2010, although the rate varied by income, education, and rural versus urban location.

Despite continuing fertility reduction, Cambodia still has a youthful population that is likely to maintain population growth through population momentum. Improvements have also been made in mortality, life expectancy, and contraceptive prevalence, although reducing malnutrition among children remains stalled. Differences in health indicators are pronounced between urban and rural areas, which experience greater poverty.

Cambodia is predominantly a country of migration, driven by the search for work, education, or marriage. Internal migration is more prevalent than international migration, with rural to urban migration being the most common, followed by rural to rural migration. Urban migration focuses on the pursuit of unskilled or semi-skilled jobs in Phnom Penh, with men working mainly in the construction industry and women working in garment factories.

Most Cambodians who migrate abroad do so illegally using brokers because it is cheaper and faster than through formal channels, but doing so puts them at risk of being trafficked for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Young Cambodian men and women migrate short distances across the Thai border using temporary passes to work in agriculture, while others migrate long distances primarily into Thailand and Malaysia for work in agriculture, fishing, construction, manufacturing, and domestic service.

Cambodia was a refugee sending country in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime, its ousting by the Vietnamese invasion, and the resultant civil war. Tens of thousands of Cambodians fled to Thailand; more than 100,000 were resettled in the US in the 1980s.

Cambodia signed a multi-million dollar agreement with Australia in 2014 to voluntarily resettle refugees seeking shelter in Australia. However, the deal has proven to be a failure because of poor conditions and a lack of support services for the few refugees willing to accept the offer.

conventional long form:

Kingdom of Cambodia

conventional short form:

Cambodia

local long form:

Preahreacheanachakr Kampuchea (phonetic transliteration)

local short form:

Kampuchea

former:

Khmer Republic, Democratic Kampuchea, People's Republic of Kampuchea, State of Cambodia

etymology:

the English name Cambodia is an anglicization of the French Cambodge, which is the French transliteration of the native name Kampuchea

description:

bicameral Parliament of Cambodia consists of:; Senate (62 seats; 58 indirectly elected by parliamentarians and commune councils, 2 indirectly elected by the National Assembly, and 2 appointed by the monarch; members serve 6-year terms); National Assembly (125 seats; members directly elected in multi-seat constituencies by proportional representation vote; members serve 5-year terms)

elections:

Senate - last held on 25 February 2024 (next to be held in February 2030); National Assembly - last held on 23 July 2023 (next to be held in July 2028)

election results:

• Senate - percent of vote by party - CPP 86%, KWP 12%;
• seats by party - CPP 57;
• KWP 3;
• independent 2;
• composition - men 50, women 12, percentage women 19.4%

;

• National Assembly - percent of vote by party - CPP 82.4%, FUNCINPEC 9.2%, KNUP 1.7%, CYP 1.3%, other 5.4% (14 other parties received votes);
• seats by party - CPP 120, FUNCINPEC 5;
• composition - men 108, women 17, percentage women 13.6%

note: the EU, UN, and US condemned the July 2023 National Assembly election as neither free nor fair

general assessment:

• Cambodia’s mobile-dominated telecoms sector spent much of 2020 battling two major challenges: the global pandemic, and the government’s retraction of trial licenses for the rollout of 5G;
• citing concerns about waste and inefficiency occurring if each operator built a separate 5G infrastructure in order to maximize their own network’s coverage (and, presumably, to capture greater market share), the regulator withdrew the licenses that the operators had been using for their 5G trials;
• this was despite all of the operators having already announced a successful completion of their trials;
• more than a year later, the market is still waiting on the government to release its 5G policy and roadmap, along with the allocation of spectrum and approvals to permit commercial operation;
• there is little expectation of any further progress happening before the start of 2022;
• the mobile network operators have maintained their focus and investment strategies on upgrading and expanding their existing LTE networks around the country, and to 5G-enable their base stations;
• when the 5G market eventually arrives, the underlying infrastructure will at least be ready to support a rapid adoption of the higher-value applications and services;
• the mobile market fell back slightly during 2020 and 2021 (in terms of total subscriber numbers) as the Covid-19 crisis wore on, but it remains in relatively good health as mobile users increased their data usage over the period;
• the mobile broadband market experienced a small but very rare contraction in 2020, although rates were already very high in this area;
• there is likely to be a quick rebound to previous levels once economic conditions stabilize, followed by a modest rates of growth over the next five years;
• the number of fixed telephony lines in service continues to fall sharply as customers migrate to mobile platforms for both voice and data;
• the lack of any widespread fixed-line infrastructure has had a flow-on effect in the fixed-line broadband market, a sector that also remains largely under-developed (2021)

domestic:

• fixed-line connections stand at less than 1 per 100 persons;
• mobile-cellular usage, aided by competition among service providers, is about 120 per 100 persons (2021)

international:

• country code - 855;
• landing points for MCT and AAE-1 via submarine cables providing communication to Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa;
• satellite earth station - 1 Intersputnik (Indian Ocean region) (2019)

• the RCAF is armed largely with older Chinese and Russian-origin equipment;
• in recent years it has received limited amounts of more modern equipment from several suppliers, particularly China (2024)

note: in December 2021, the US Government halted arms-related trade with Cambodia, citing deepening Chinese military influence, corruption, and human rights abuses by the government and armed forces;

the policy of denial applied to licenses or other approvals for exports and imports of defense articles and defense services destined for or originating in Cambodia, with exceptions (on a case-by-case basis) related to conventional weapons destruction and humanitarian demining activities

the RCAF’s primary responsibilities are border, coastal, and internal security; since 2016, the RCAF has regularly conducted a small annual training exercise known as “Golden Dragon” with the military of China, its closest security partner

the RCAF was re-established in 1993 under the first coalition government from the merger of the Cambodian Government’s military forces (Cambodian People’s Armed Forces) and the two non-communist resistance forces (Sihanoukist National Army, aka National Army for Khmer Independence, and the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces);

thousands of communist Khmer Rouge fighters began surrendering by 1994 under a government amnesty program and the last of the Khmer Rouge forces (National Army of Democratic Kampuchea) were demobilized or absorbed into the RCAF in 1999

Cambodia continues to be one of the most densely landmine-contaminated countries in the world; by the early 1990s, various aid organizations estimated there were 8-10 million landmines scattered throughout the country, with a particularly heavy concentration on a 1,000-km (620-mile) strip along the northwest Thai-Cambodia border known as the "K5 belt";

the mines were laid during Cambodia’s decades-long war by the Cambodian army, the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge, the non-communist fighters, and US forces; part of Cambodia's defense policy is demining the territory with the intent of having the entire country cleared of unexploded ordnances by 2035;

over 1 million landmines and over 3 million explosives were discovered and removed from 1992 to 2018; in 2018, the Cambodian government and Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), a government agency, launched the National Mine Action Strategy for 2018-2025 (2024)