In the spring of 2019, Cambodia placed near the very bottom of the global Rule of Law Index for the third year running.
The annual ranking by the World Justice Project (WJP) – a Washington-based non-profit which assesses rule of law based on political impartiality of judges, constraints on government power, absence of corruption and access to civil and criminal justice – listed the Kingdom in second-to-last place above only crisis-ridden Venezuela, and below perennial tough customers Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
An inauspicious placement for sure, and yet the report caused more of a stir outside the halls of government than within it. In comments made in March to the Phnom Penh Post, government spokesman Phay Siphan hit the same tack he’d used to dismiss previous iterations of the report and wrote it off altogether as a baseless attack on the country’s government.
