had governed citizenship.11 The most
important change to the previous colonial
citizenship regime was the introduction
of a double jus soli mode of conferral of
citizenship that conferred citizenship to a
child born to non-citizens in Cambodia,
where one of the non-citizen parents
was also born in Cambodia. The new
laws also allowed for naturalisation,
subject to requirements that were seen
to be consistent with the promotion of
a ‘Khmer’ national identity and have
subsequently permeated future legal
frameworks on naturalisation.12 Whilst on
paper citizenship laws became more open
and accessible, in imagination and practice
Cambodian nationality became intimately
linked to Khmer ethnicity and culture to
the exclusion of other large ethnic groups
that were considered ‘foreign’ to the new
nation, especially resident populations of
Vietnamese origin.13
This initial citizenship regime was
subsequently disrupted by more than
two decades of war, mass atrocities and
political regime changes, most notably
during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79).
Following the widespread destruction of
pre-war archival and population records,
Cambodia had to rebuild a new citizenship
and civil registration regime from scratch
during the 1990s, including re-establishing
registration systems and re-building the
administrative infrastructure and human
resources. Large-scale displacements
and the politicization of ethnicity during
the conflicts created difficult legacies for
Cambodia’s citizenry. This was especially
true for the country’s ethnic Vietnamese
minority, which frequently found itself
caught up in the contentious interstate
relationship between Cambodia and
Vietnam.14 Similarly, different waves of
migration from Vietnam to Cambodia
of Khmer Krom – the indigenous ethnic
Khmer people from what is today Southern
Vietnam – occurred in contemporary
history. This context and history are
very much on Cambodians’ mind when
questions of citizenship and by extension
statelessness are debated.
11 Kram No. 913-NS of 30 November 1954.
12 See more at Sperfeldt, Christoph (2017) ‘Report on Citizenship Law: Cambodia’, GLOBALCIT Country
Report 2017/2, Florence: European University Institute.
13 Canzutti, Lucrezia (2019) ‘Precarious (Non-)Citizens: A Historical Analysis of Ethnic Vietnamese’
Access to Citizenship in Cambodia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(7): 1764-1784.
14 See Amer, Ramses (2006) ‘Cambodia’s Ethnic Vietnamese: Minority Rights and Domestic Politics’, Asian
Journal of Social Science 34(3): 388-409.
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