Global panel to hear Cambodia-Thailand sea dispute

SINGAPORE – Cambodia and Thailand will face off before international mediators in Singapore this week in a longstanding dispute over valuable maritime resources – the latest spat between the feuding neighbours.

Phnom Penh initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) after Bangkok pulled out of an agreement to work towards joint offshore energy exploitation in the Gulf of Thailand.

The 2001 memorandum of understanding covers a vast and resource-rich territory of around 27,000 sq km to which both Cambodia and Thailand lay claim.

Bangkok in May unilaterally pulled out of the framework agreement, called MOU 44, saying that “no progress had been made” in implementing it.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied that the withdrawal was linked to the simmering border conflict with Thailand’s South-east Asian neighbour, which had erupted into two rounds of clashes in 2025 that left dozens of people dead and displaced more than a million before a truce was agreed.

Cambodia said last week that it resorted to the conciliation process “after Thailand unilaterally terminated the agreed bilateral framework” through which the two nations had “negotiated their overlapping maritime claims for more than two decades”.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said in June that the move was also to “protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and maritime rights in accordance with international law”.

The two countries’ representatives are set to give their opening statements on Sept 15 before a five-member conciliation panel of international law experts at the offices of the world’s oldest arbitration court in Singapore.

Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn is expected to open the floor, followed by his Thai counterpart Sihasak Phuangketkeow.

Set up in 1899, the PCA is the world’s oldest intergovernmental dispute-resolution body and resolves disputes between countries and private parties by referring to contracts, special agreements and various treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The PCA office in Singapore is the Hague-based court’s first in Asia.

The commission’s recommendations are not binding, and will take about a year to be decided.

Hope for lasting resolution

Both Cambodia and Thailand have welcomed the opportunity to put their points across.

“The meeting marks another important milestone in the peaceful process initiated by Cambodia to resolve the countries’ maritime differences,” Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Phnom Penh said that it hopes the process can help Cambodia and Thailand reach a “fair and lasting resolution of their maritime differences” and open a pathway to explore significant oil and gas resources.

Thailand’s Energy Ministry has estimated future revenues from oil and natural gas in the nations’ overlapping claims area to be worth around US$300 billion (S$380 billion).

The Thai Foreign Ministry said it was “ready to cooperate fully with and support the work of the Conciliation Commission”, and remained committed to safeguarding its national interests.

An analyst, however, said that both Thailand’s withdrawal and Cambodia’s conciliation case were closely linked with domestic politics and the recent conflict.

“It was intended to project strength and to signal to voters that the legacy of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, under whose administration the 2001 MOU was originally drafted, was officially over,” wrote William Jones, an international politics expert at Thailand’s Mahidol University International College.

Meanwhile, Cambodia’s case was a “shrewd political move” on Hun Manet’s part, Jones wrote in current affairs magazine The Diplomat.

“Having suffered a military defeat on the land border and remaining in an inferior position to its Thai counterpart”, Hun Manet was choosing a legal avenue that “promised low cost and high potential reward”, Jones said. AFP