Global Witness - Breaking the links between natural resources, conflict and corruption
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Cambodia
Global Witness first began exposing illegal logging in Cambodia and its links with conflict, corruption and human rights abuses in 1995.
Its early work exposed how, in the last years of Cambodia's civil war, both the Khmer Rouge and the Phnom Penh government used logging to fund military campaigns and then used military campaigns as a pretext for more logging.
The war ended in 1998, but the destruction of Cambodia's forests has continued. Global Witness has carried on investigating illegal logging and associated corruption in Cambodia, exposing the individuals and companies involved, and revealing the schemes which allow them to operate.
Despite many campaign successes, Cambodia's leaders have still not kicked the habit of treating the country's forests as a personal slush fund. The environmental, social and economic costs of this are severe.
Cambodia's forests continue to be exploited by those in power and are under threat of complete destruction.
In 2007 a Global Witness report, Cambodia’s Family Trees, exposed the country’s most powerful logging syndicate, led by relatives of Prime Minister Hun Sen and other senior officials.
Read more about the Cambodia forest campaign
A new Global Witness report, Country for Sale, details how Cambodia’s corrupt elite has captured the country’s emerging oil and mineral sectors while Cambodia’s international donors turn a blind eye.
The country is on the verge of a petroleum and minerals windfall. If managed well, revenue from these new extractive industries could provide the Cambodian government with the best chance in a generation to lift its people out of poverty. If mismanaged through corruption or ineptitude, the money generated runs the risk of widening the gap between rich and poor and entrenching the positions of the ruling elite.
Watch our film on illegal logging in Cambodia:
The Green Deal in Cambodia Part 1
The Green Deal in Cambodia Part 2
The Green Deal in Cambodia Part 3
