I. The Paris Agreements and Developments Since 1991

At the same Kleber Center where in 1973 the United States and Vietnam signed their Paris Peace Agreement, on October 23, 1991, 18 countries, including all five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the four warring Cambodian parties, signed the Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict. Cambodians hoped that the Paris Agreements would lead to the end of the more than decade-long civil war with the Khmer Rouge, raise abysmal living standards, and improve respect for basic human rights. Foreign diplomats, who celebrated the new agreement at a reception at the Versailles Palace Library, hoped to cross Cambodia off the list of Cold War issues that had long bedeviled relations among the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam.

Because of the unprecedented brutality of the Khmer Rouge period from 1975-1979 and the oppressive one-party rule that followed from 1979-1991, the protection of human rights was a central theme of the Paris Agreements. A section in Annex 1, entitled “Human Rights,” stated that the newly created United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia ( UNTAC), would make provisions for:

a) The development and implementation of a programme of human rights education to promote respect for and understanding of human rights;

b) General human rights oversight during the transitional period;

c) The investigation of human rights complaints, and, where appropriate, corrective action.[6]

To bind the four Cambodian parties and 18 signatory states to their human rights commitments, the Paris Agreements were unusually prescriptive in laying out, “ Principles for a New Constitution for Cambodia.” These provisions would be applicable after UNTAC left Cambodia, which it did on schedule in September 1993. Human-rights-related provisions are contained in Annex 5 and include:

2. Cambodia's tragic recent history requires special measures to assure protection of human rights. Therefore, the constitution will contain a declaration of fundamental rights, including the rights to life, personal liberty, security, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, assembly and association including political parties and trade unions, due process and equality before the law, protection from arbitrary deprivation of property or deprivation of private property without just compensation, and freedom from racial, ethnic, religious or sexual discrimination. It will prohibit the retroactive application of criminal law. The declaration will be consistent with the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other relevant international instruments. Aggrieved individuals will be entitled to have the courts adjudicate and enforce these rights….

4. The constitution will state that Cambodia will follow a system of liberal democracy, on the basis of pluralism. It will provide for periodic and genuine elections. It will provide for the right to vote and to be elected by universal and equal suffrage. It will provide for voting by secret ballot, with a requirement that electoral procedures provide a full and fair opportunity to organise and participate in the electoral process.

5. An independent judiciary will be established, empowered to enforce the rights provided under the constitution.[7]

The Paris Agreements mandated the creation of UNTAC, at the time the largest and most expensive UN peacekeeping mission ever. UNTAC, with both civilian and military components, had many tasks, including supervision of a ceasefire; cantonment and disarmament of the Cambodian signatories’ armed forces and the creation of a new national army; control of the existing administration of each party, the largest of which was run by the SOC; the staging of multi-party elections; and the protection of human rights.

Faced with resistance from the SOC and the Khmer Rouge, UNTAC failed or made only partial progress in all these areas. One major accomplishment was presiding over a largely peaceful vote in May 1993 for a Constituent Assembly, although this was marred by a massive campaign of violence and intimidation in the run-up to the election by the SOC against opposition parties and activists. The Khmer Rouge withdrew from the process and carried out many atrocious attacks, often against the ethnic Vietnamese community. The Constituent Assembly adopted a new constitution in September 1993, which includes a long list of fundamental rights that remains in place today, though is largely ignored in practice.

The Paris Agreements were supposed to transform Cambodia. In many ways they did. Over the past 20 years Cambodia has changed dramatically. As of 1991 the country still suffered egregiously from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period, with a physically and psychologically devastated population, absence of basic infrastructure, and little in the way of health care, education, or industry. Before Paris most Cambodians struggled to obtain basic necessities, due both to the crippling embargo imposed by the US and its allies after the 1979 Vietnamese invasion and the SOC’s mismanaged and corrupt state-controlled economy. Civil rights were routinely trampled upon and government institutions existed outside of the rule of law.

After Paris, the country quickly reintegrated into first the regional and then the world economy. The country was opened to foreign investors, who were given huge tax breaks and other incentives – but with obligatory bribes to government officials at all levels. Some invested in emerging industries such as Cambodia’s garment sector, creating employment for hundreds of thousands. Others operated hand-in-hand with Cambodian officials to plunder the country’s natural resources, particularly its dwindling forests. Roads, schools and health clinics have been built, largely with the more than $10 billion of donor money provided since Paris, though the gains are more evident in urban areas. Cambodia’s large rural population suffers from widening inequality in incomes and opportunities, as well as persistent poverty, despite overall poverty reduction .

One of the most significant accomplishments of the Paris Agreements was to open the country to the world, which over time has had a profound effect on many Cambodians. Paris and UNTAC wedged open space, grudgingly conceded by the CPP, for Cambodians to read and learn about the world – from which most had been closed off for nearly two decades – and their own country. Whereas before Paris open forms of dissent were not tolerated, Cambodians are now free to speak their minds on most subjects, although often at a cost when they do so in a politically confrontational manner. Most significantly, Cambodia now has a thriving and critical nongovernmental sector, which because of government indifference and malfeasance often provides basic services that a more functional state would deliver.

The controversial inclusion of the Khmer Rouge as one of the parties to the Paris Agreements ultimately led to the movement’s demise, as China kept its part of the bargain and cut off aid and military backing, thereby isolating and weakening the Khmer Rouge, who enjoyed virtually no popular support. By 1996 senior Khmer Rouge leaders began defecting to the government. By the end of 1998, both Pol Pot and the murderous movement he controlled were dead, transforming the lives of millions of Cambodians who suffered from war for decades.

Yet the country has made strikingly little progress in creating a culture of good governance and the rule of law. Most Cambodians remain very poor, in part because of breathtaking levels of corruption that have enriched government officials and discouraged honest foreign investors. Despite low official salaries, high-ranking government officials are often very wealthy, owning large villas, luxury cars, and major stakes in business enterprises. Indeed, no one has ever explained how Hun Sen, who has been a government official since 1979, could afford the large house and compound in Kandal province that he has occupied since the mid-1990’s. Corruption is so bad – and is the subject that seems to most anger ordinary Cambodians – that in 2011 the World Bank suspended its assistance to Cambodia. A s long ago as 2005, the World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, said the government’s top three priorities should be, “fighting corruption, fighting corruption, and fighting corruption.” [8]

The state health and education systems remain weak and donor-dependent. Donors have augmented the country’s tiny tax base by providing approximately 50 percent of the state budget since Paris, but this has had the unintended consequence of allowing the government to spend much of its official resources on an inflated army and police, including a de facto private army for Hun Sen.

Since Paris, power has become increasingly centralized in the CPP and now resides primarily with Hun Sen, a former low-level Khmer Rouge commander who has been prime minister since 1985. [9] Eclipsing the party, he now takes all key decisions. All senior civilian and military officials report to Hun Sen, who has installed his own people in almost all of the leading positions in the cabinet, military, gendarmerie, and police. He runs both the government and a parallel network of governing authorities with an iron fist, demanding loyalty before competence. Local officials around the country frequently emulate his practices.

The result is the failure since Paris to build strong institutions to promote good governance, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. The National Assembly is a rubber stamp. The opposition is increasingly marginalized, with Sam Rainsy, the leader of the opposition, living in exile to escape long prison sentences for peaceful political activities.

The military and police have remained under political control since Paris. The security and intelligence forces have been party instruments since their reestablishment after the Khmer Rouge was ejected from power by the Vietnamese army in 1979. Hun Sen has personally controlled the police since the failed July 1994 CPP coup attempt against him, which implicated Chea Sim and members of his faction of the party. As recompense, Hun Sen demanded that Chea Sim allow him to appoint his own man, Hok Lundy, as national police chief. Lundy quickly established a reputation for brutality and became the most feared man in Cambodia. Loyal until his death in a 2008 helicopter crash, he was replaced by Neth Savouen, a relative by marriage of Hun Sen and also notorious for committing human rights abuses since the 1980’s. Neth Savouen is currently a member of the CPP Central Committee. [10]

After many attempts, Hun Sen in 2009 replaced General Ke Kim Yan with General Pol Sarouen as the head of the armed forces. Both are members of the CPP Central Committee, yet Ke Kim Yan is part of CPP President Chea Sim’s faction of the party, while Pol Sarouen has been linked to Hun Sen since their time in the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s.

The courts and justice system are controlled by Hun Sen and the CPP. Most judges and prosecutors are CPP members who implement party directives, and believe they have no leeway to do otherwise. Most glaringly, Dith Munthy, the chief judge of the Supreme Court, is a member of the CPP’s Permanent Committee of the Central Committee and of the party’s six-person Standing Committee.[11] Like all senior party members, he is expected to place party loyalty over his official responsibilities.