Country Profile: A Review of the New Juvenile Offenders Status in Cambodia

This publication seeks to explore whether the position of juvenile offenders vis‐à‐vis the Cambodian criminal law has changed with the passage of the new criminal legislation and whether this change has been positive or otherwise. The quality of this change will demonstrate to the reader whether the overall process of the reform of the juvenile justice component of the Cambodian system of criminal justice, which spans the last fifteen years and has been funded by the international community, has been a success. The author limited the scope of this inquiry to a comparison between the various domestic laws applicable to juvenile offenders and did not include comparisons with international law, model laws or juvenile laws of other states. Being the first publication of its kind, this analysis limits its claim to the analysis of the relevant statutory provisions rather than ‘practice notes’ which have yet to develop.