Life expectancy is less than 60 years of age. And while the population has nearly doubled since the 1960's, the amount of land available for cultivation has shrunk by 25 percent. Few foreign investors have decided to commit themselves to the country's long-term future. Nearly a decade after Cambodia's first post-Communist election, there is a broad sense here that the expensive effort by the United Nations to create a democratic state was a failure. Mr. Hun Sen's coup was a final readjustment, nullifying the election's outcome and reinstating much of the political power structure that preceded it.
Critics note that, as in other new democracies, an election is only an initial step.
The United Nations failed to go farther in breaking down the grip of Mr. Hun Sen's party on government administration and the armed forces. Because of this, we can work better now in terms of mobilizing pressure and public opinion and exposing wrongdoing. At the start of the last decade there were just 12 local non-governmental organizations. Today there are 360, a sort of shadow government that provides services ranging from the protection of women to the digging of wells to the provision of legal aid. Many of those involved are young Cambodians who received their first education in political and civil rights during the period of United Nations control.