Furthermore, additional recommendations
were made to Cambodia under the UN
Human Rights Council’s Universal
Periodic Review (UPR), since the country’s
first cycle in 2009. A list of relevant
findings and recommendations by these
treaty bodies and the UPR are detailed
in an annex to this report. Finally, the
UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation
of Human Rights in Cambodia has
frequently raised the issue of statelessness
in their reporting. Thus, the human rights
implications of statelessness in Cambodia
are now well documented by international
human rights bodies and mechanisms.
3.2. National legal
frameworks governing
citizenship
This section provides an overview of
the current legal framework governing
access to nationality and citizenship in
Cambodia. Cambodia’s system of laws
sits in a hierarchy, whereby lower laws
and regulations should generally conform
to higher laws. Accordingly, Cambodia’s
primary source of law is its Constitution.
Laws (chbab) are adopted by the legislator,
while royal decrees (reach kret) and subdecrees (anu-kret), as well as proclamations
(prakas) or circulars issued by the executive
branch of government provide further
implementing legislation, regulations and
instructions.17
Before delving into the national legal
framework, it is important to sound a
note of caution. The current citizenship
regime is characterised by a relatively
well-developed legal framework behind
which is hidden an often-different reality
of implementation and practice. Laws and
regulations on citizenship are not always
implemented as written. This limits
an official account of the operation of
Cambodia’s citizenship regime, as theory
and practice often do not align. Thus, the
following account of the current citizenship
regime is complicated by a lack of certainty
over the degree of respect for, and
enforcement of relevant laws and policies.
Moreover, many laws and regulations are
not easily available in public. The same is
true for written judgments or citizenshiprelated statistics. Against this background,
it is important to note that this report is
limited to the available information, and it
does not purport to be comprehensive in
the way it portrays the practical operation
of Cambodia’s citizenship regime.18
In the following, two key pieces of
legislation are being reviewed that affect
and manage citizenship in Cambodia: the
1994 Immigration Law that governs non-
17 Kong Phallak (2012) ‘Overview of the Cambodian Legal and Judicial System’, in: Hor Peng, Kong
Phallack, and Joerg Menzel (eds) Introduction to Cambodian Law, Phnom Penh: Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung, 5-22.
18 The legal framework section draws on Sperfeldt, Christoph (2017) ‘Report on Citizenship Law:
Cambodia’, GLOBALCIT Country Report 2017/2, Florence: European University Institute.
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