2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) rebuked by the Government of Cambodia. 4 Considering a history of past persecutions, especially under the Khmer Rouge regime during the 1970s, affected Vietnamese populations refrain from public engagement because of fear and safety concerns. In 2018, the remaining senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge still alive were convicted of committing genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese in Case 002/02 before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Vietnamese civil parties in that case had also requested that their lack of Cambodian nationality be considered under the court’s collective reparations mandate. 5 In 2012, the report A Boat Without Anchors broke new ground in exploring the legal status of long-term resident populations of Vietnamese origin living on floating villages on the Tonle Sap in Kampong Chhnang province. 6 The report found respondents were living legally in Cambodia and possessed various forms of documentation identifying them as ‘foreign residents’ — but none held proof of nationality of any state. 7 Without nationality or another more robust legal identity, these Vietnamese do not have access to basic economic, political and social rights and face an array of disadvantages, including limited freedom of movement, being unable to own land and difficulty accessing employment, education, health care and legal protection. 8 Renewed attention from the media 9 and scholars 10 has contributed to raising the issue among national and international audiences. The issue has also reemerged on the radar of international human rights mechanisms. The Human Rights Committee has recommended that Cambodia ‘facilitate access to identification documentation’ and ‘guarantee the right of stateless children who were born in the territory of Cambodia to stateless parents to acquire a nationality’. 11 In 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also called on the Government to take measures against hate 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Khuon Narim, ‘Kingdom Rejects Vietnam’s Request to Provide Citizenship to its Nationals’, Khmer Times (online, 21 August 2019) <www.khmertimeskh.com/635604/kingdom-rejectsvietnams-request-to-provide-citizenship-to-its-nationals/>. See Case 002 (Summary of Judgment) (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Trial Chamber, Case No. 002/19-09-2007/ECCC/T, 16 November 2018). See also Lyma Nguyen and Christoph Sperfeldt (2014) ‘Victim Participation and Minorities in Internationalised Criminal Trials: Ethnic Vietnamese Civil Parties at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’14 Macquarie Law Journal 97. Lyma Nguyen and Christoph Sperfeldt, A Boat Without Anchors: A Report on the Legal Status of Ethnic Vietnamese Minority Populations in Cambodia under Domestic and International Laws Governing Nationality and Statelessness (Report, 2012). ibid 95–96. ibid 72–76. See, eg, Ben Mauk, ‘A People in Limbo, Many Living Entirely on the Water’, New York Times Magazine (online, 28 March 2018) <https://nyti.ms/2usiXnn>. See, eg, Laurie Parsons and Sabina Lawreniuk, ‘Seeing Like the Stateless: Documentation and the Mobilities of Liminal Citizenship in Cambodia’ (2018) 62 Political Geography 1; Lucrezia Canzutti, ‘(Co-)Producing Liminality: Cambodia and Vietnam’s ‘Shared Custody’ of the Vietnamese Diaspora in Cambodia’ (2019) 71 Political Geography 26; Charlie Rumsby, ‘The God School: Informal Christian Education and Emerging Aspirations among De Facto Stateless Children Living in Cambodia’ (2021) 33 European Journal of Development Research 89. Human Rights Committee, Concluding Observations on the Second Periodic Report of Cambodia, UN Doc CCPR/C/KHM/CO/2 (27 April 2015, adopted 31 March 2015) [27]. 348