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The endemic corruption has severe consequences for the quality of governance and efforts to attain sustainable development. Corruption is a form of public theft. In stead of acting “grease”, corruption serves as a kind of “sand” in the gears of public policy decision-making.

Cambodia has been upgraded to a “medium performer” based on the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) and now faces a low risk of debt distress (from moderate last year). While external debt burden indicators do not breach the relevant indicative thresholds under the baseline scenario, the debt level is sensitive to shocks as indicated in standard bound tests.2 Under an alternative scenario with a higher level of borrowing over the medium and long term, Cambodia may lose its low debt distress rating. In particular, the scope for absorbing additional risk, including from contingent liabilities related to the rapid growth of infrastructure projects outside the budget and the banking system, would be substantially smaller. All this underscores the need for a prudent borrowing strategy, underpinned by continued fiscal consolidation over the medium term, and improvements in debt and contingent liability management, which should be incorporated in the authorities’ upcoming debt strategy document.

The occasion of International Human Rights Day, December 10th, 2006 is the 58th anniversary of the universal declaration on Human Rights that was passed on December 10th, 1948. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee (CHRAC), a coalition of 23 NGO members, extends its appreciation for the efforts of the Royal government for making a number of progresses for the respects for human rights. However, we have noticed a great deal of impediments in the application of principles of human rights, democracy and policy for reduction of poverty such as…

The idea of a distinctly ‘liberal’ form of multiculturalism has emerged in the theory and practice of Western democracies, and the international community has become actively engaged in its global dissemination via international norms and organizations. Liberal multiculturalism defends some forms of minority rights as advancing basic liberal values of individual freedom, democracy, and social justice. The internationalization of liberal minority rights norms faces many challenges. To help identify these challenges, it is useful to focus on one country and one particular interpretation of liberal multiculturalism. To this end, this thesis explores state-minority-relations in Cambodia in light of Will Kymlicka’s theory of multicultural citizenship. Kymlicka’s conception of multicultural citizenship shares many of the basic assumptions of other liberal theorists of multiculturalism and helps making sense of Western multiculturalism as well as of emerging international minority rights norms. Unlike other theorists, Kymlicka has explicitly discussed the potential for adopting liberal multiculturalism in non-Western societies.