Reforming the Private and Property Laws and Setting up the Securities Market in Cambodia

Abstract

Ⅰ. Background and Purpose

1. Background Some international development aid agencies and donor countries came in to assist in Cambodia’s efforts to establish the necessary legal infrastructures. Japan, being a well-developed market economy in Asia, also joined and officially launched its own legal assistance projects in 1998 to help Cambodia draft a Civil Code and a Civil Procedure Code. These two Codes play a central role in a civil law country in opening up and defining the scope of private autonomy in its market system.

2. Purpose The first issue is about international cooperation in facilitating legal reforms, primarily focusing on the case of Japanese legal assistance in the drafting of the Civil Code, the Civil Procedure Code and other relevant laws and regulations in Cambodia. The second issue is related to human resources development in the field of law, including professional training activities and basic legal education assistance and reform schemes at the university level. The third is a preliminary review of the development of some new economic institutions which have emerged in Cambodia as a result of years of reform and international cooperation.

Ⅱ. Main Contents The chapter 2 gives an overview of the historical background, the justification and motivation for Japan to become active in assisting Cambodia’s reforms in the field of private law starting from the last decade of the 20th century. Although the chapter positively evaluates the comprehensiveness of the Japanese assistance, which incorporates human resources development into the institutional building aspect, it concludes with some cautious remarks on the remaining gaps between capacity building for individual experts and professionals and the institutional capacity building visions at large. The chapter 3 follows by looking into the history and development of the Japanese legal assistance project in Cambodia. However, the chapter also examines the achievements and challenges of the assistance and suggests some critical questions for further deliberation regarding the evaluation of long-term impacts. The chapter 4 gives a very vivid narration of the latest development of the Japanese project in Cambodia. It gives mostly first-hand account of the dramatic collaboration between individual experts and the counterparts and the challenges confronting them. Following up with the discussions on the issue of human resources development and the long-term impacts of legal assistance, Chapter 5 focuses chapter five on the development of university-level legal education in Cambodia and some main challenges thereof. Chapters 6 to 9 mainly look into some specific and challenging areas of legal development in Cambodia as a result of two decades of legal reforms and accepting international assistance in promoting the development of private and property laws in particular.

Ⅲ. Expected Effect The Chapters indeed give very detail substances and can be useful in different ways to different people. These introductory paragraphs do not suffice to do justice to their richness, objectives and intents. Readers are encouraged to read the details of these chapters and find for themselves the details and information that they need most. This short introduction will only serve the sear purpose of guiding readers to a summarization of the themes of this compilation and help them grasp a primary quick overview of the relationship between the chapters.