UN General Assembly
2017

As all delegations know, peacekeeping operations are not without security risks. Peacekeepers continue to come under attack from armed groups and increasingly from terrorists. In May, rebel ambushes in the Central African Republic killed and wounded our Cambodian peacekeepers. Let us pay tribute to those who have died while serving under the United Nations flag and remind ourselves to acknowledge their contributions in the transformation of many countries from battlefields to peaceful States. I now wish to address the issues of human rights and democracy, since my country is regularly targeted in that regard by some countries and United Nations agencies, as well as by international non-governmental organizations active in these areas. Cambodia upholds the universal principle that we all possess fundamental human rights. We therefore see no incompatibility between national sovereignty, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and international monitoring of the application of those rights, provided that it is impartial and takes all pertinent factors on the ground into account, and that observers harbour no prejudice or prejudgement against democratically elected authorities.