The Diplomat | Jacob Sims writes that Western strategic missteps, absent U.N. accountability, a gutted civil society, and Thai aggression are providing cover for Hun Sen’s weakened leadership..

Hun Sen, president of the Cambodia People’s Party (CPP), is less powerful than at any point in the past decade. But during could be a window of opportunity for change, the international response remains “miscalibrated, timid, and dangerously out of step with reality.”

Hun Sen has been in power for four decades due to the loyalty of elite powerbrokers in the security, business, and political arenas. Those relationships seem to be weakening.

Western policy toward Cambodia has traditionally prioritized fracturing its relationship with China to the exclusion of other issues, including human rights, political repression, and criminal activity. This approach has weakened Western influence.

“Perhaps most damaging,” Sims writes, “it outright ignores the profound influence of Cambodia’s illicit political economy — particularly its cyber-scam and trafficking industries — which bind elites, security forces, and foreign actors together in ways that blunt external pressure, particularly of the Western variety.”

Meanwhile, UN international accountability mechanisms are collapsing, even during the Thai-Cambodian border crisis. The CPP has dismantled political opposition, independent media, investigative civil society, and victim-support groups.

U.S. funding cuts have undermined what remained of Cambodian civil society, and the same groups that worked toward the indictments of Chen Zhi and the Prince Group in late 2025.

Meanwhile, it appears that the Thai forces are bombing active scam compounds populated with human-trafficking victims (despite known scam activity within its own borders).

Sims identifies three priorities where international collaboration can make a difference moving forward. >> Full article: The World Is Failing Cambodia (Again) – and This Time Everyone Is Suffering