Profile of Cambodia

Cambodia is a kingdom the origins of which go all the way back to the time of the Ancient Greeks. It has common frontiers with Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. After being a French colony, Cambodia became politically independent in1953. Its population of 11 million essentially stems from the Khmer, Chinese and Vietnamese ethnic groups.

A bit of History...

In the 1970s, a civil war was ended with arrival to power of the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea regime, headed by Pol Pot. The subsequent extermination of the population (nearly 1,7 million people were killed) and the exodus of tens of thousands of refugees devastated the country, especially the artistic and intellectual communities.

In 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown by the Vietnamese. After that, twelve years of armed opposition and warfare among the various factions were ended with the signature of the Paris Peace Accord, in 1991, which proclaimed the United Nations Treansitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). In May 1993, UNTAC supervised the first democratic elections in Cambodian history.