AKP Phnom Penh, July 27, 2025 -- On July 11, the World Heritage Committee added Cambodia’s fifth site to its list. 

A week later, on July 18, Phnom Penh’s Olympic Stadium was overflowing with enthusiasm to welcome this achievement. 

Prime Minister Samdech Moha Borvor Thipadei Hun Manet spoke of how the Cambodian Memorial Sites represented the transformation from centres of repression to places of peace and reflection in the spirit of “Orkun Santepheap” (Thanks for Peace).

Yet, cruelly, only one week later, the drums of war, the screaming sound of F-16s overhead, cluster bombs and mine explosions are filling the skies around our second World Heritage Site, the Temple of Preah Vihear, and along our border with Thailand. 

Ironically, this was a similar scenario to the one 17 years ago— just one week after the inscription of the Temple of Preah Vihear into the World Heritage List on July 7, 2008, and one day after this achievement was welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister H.E. Sok An and enthusiastic masses in the Olympic Stadium on July 14, Thai armed forces advanced across the border and fired at least 414 artillery shells and cluster bombs into Preah Vihear and into other temples along the border, including Tamone and Ta Krabey. 

After repelling at least five incursions, reaching up to 30 km inside the border, Cambodia took the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in 2013 reaffirmed that the Temple of Preah Vihear is Cambodian — based on commonly accepted maps and usage since 1907 (including by the Thai government) and at the time of Cambodian independence in 1953. 

These events are strikingly familiar. 

The 2013 ruling was a reprise of the definitive ICJ 1962 ruling. 

But that one was also rejected by Thailand, as it refused to lower the Thai flag, carrying it aloft across the border, and following it with an attack on the Temple of Preah Vihear in 1966, kidnapping and murdering five border guards. 

Once again, Thailand is today refusing to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the ICJ.

When will our neighbouring government recognise that our two countries — inescapably linked by culture and history, with centuries of shifting borders — must respect the international principle of recognising existing borders at the time of independence? 

Otherwise at what point in history should we draw the border between us?

By Helen Jarvis
 
(Dr Jarvis has had the privilege to document and help preserve Cambodia’s cultural heritage over 25 years. She is an adviser to the Royal Government, but writes this comment in her personal capacity as a Cambodian citizen.)

(Photo: Helen Jarvis)