At the United Nations Security Council on 26 May 2026, with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi presiding, Secretary-General António Guterres opened a high-level debate on upholding the UN Charter. Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Prak Sokhonn delivered the country’s national statement at the same session, the 10159th meeting of the Council.
Guterres listed the Charter’s tools for peaceful settlement of disputes. Article 33 names negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and resort to regional agencies or arrangements. The Secretary-General named these mechanisms and added fact-finding and good offices. He said those means “must be used, fully and in good faith.” He cited Resolution 2788 (2025), the Council’s standing instruction that Member States use them effectively for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
Sokhonn’s statement, delivered at the same forum on the same day, invoked the same Charter principles. He named sovereign equality, territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes, and non-use of force as the foundation of the international order. The invocation places Cambodia’s procedural conduct inside the framework the Council had instructed all Member States to use, on the same record where the Secretary-General was reading out that framework. The alignment establishes Cambodia’s deployment as the conduct Article 33 enumerates and Resolution 2788 instructs. It does not establish UN endorsement of Cambodia’s substantive position against Thailand. Cambodia is the Member State actively using the Charter taxonomy. It was not a Member State being praised inside it.
Sokhonn described the UN Charter as the foundation of international order and the framework for peaceful coexistence and conflict prevention. He recalled the role of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in the early 1990s. He called for full and urgent implementation of the 27 December 2025 Joint Statement signed between Cambodia and Thailand at the Third Special General Border Committee. He stated that borders and sovereignty “must never be altered by force or through fait accompli.”
The forum reference was not abstract. Twenty-one days earlier, on 5 May 2026, Sokhonn announced that Cambodia would initiate compulsory conciliation with Thailand under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the same day Thailand’s cabinet terminated the 2001 maritime Memorandum of Understanding. Cambodia’s ratification of UNCLOS had entered into force on 8 March 2026. The pathway Cambodia activated rests on Annex V Section 2 of UNCLOS, the compulsory conciliation procedure available between States Parties that have both lodged Article 298 declarations excluding binding settlement of sea boundary disputes. Both states have lodged such declarations.
Resolution 2788 sits behind both 26 May speeches. The Council adopted it unanimously by 15-0 on 22 July 2025 under Pakistan’s presidency, with Deputy Prime Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar presiding. The text urges Member States to use the Article 33 mechanisms effectively for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Conciliation is on the list. The resolution requested Secretary-General recommendations within one year of adoption. That year ends in late July 2026, while Cambodia’s UNCLOS conciliation pathway is in flight. Any recommendations on Article 33 mechanism use will land on a record in which Cambodia has already deployed one.
Two days before the 26 May debate, Thailand’s adviser to the prime minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told Thai media that Cambodia was using international platforms to attack Thailand. Sihasak said the conduct violated the 27 December Joint Statement, under which both sides agreed to resolve issues through internal dialogue. He had earlier denied that Thailand consented to compulsory conciliation.
The Joint Statement is in the public record as UN document A/80/593-S/2026/37. Its preamble names the peaceful settlement of disputes “in accordance with the purpose and principles of the United Nations Charter,” and the ASEAN Charter, and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia. It contains no clause restricting either party from raising matters at the Security Council. ASEAN Charter Article 28 expressly preserves Member States’ right of recourse to “the modes of peaceful settlement contained in Article 33(1)” of the UN Charter. Thailand attended the 26 May debate.
The Charter frame is bidirectional. Sokhonn stated that Cambodia’s territory remains under continued illegal occupation by Thai forces. He named, as Cambodia’s stated position at the Council, specific Thai conduct in areas inside Cambodian territory: barbed wire, container units, infrastructure construction, and house destruction. That position operates inside the same Charter frame Sokhonn invoked. Article 2(4) of the Charter prohibits the threat or use of force. The 27 December Joint Statement’s ceasefire covers all types of weapons and prohibits attacks on civilians, civilian objects, infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas. The same vocabulary that authorises Cambodia’s procedural recourse to Article 33 carries Cambodia’s obligations on every continuing front the ceasefire covers.
The Secretary-General did not name Thailand.
He did not name Cambodia either. The speech was generic Charter doctrine, not a country-specific statement. What was country-specific was Cambodia’s invocation of the same principles at the same forum twenty-one days into the activation of a UNCLOS procedural pathway and 308 days into the Council’s standing instruction to use Article 33 means in full.
AP reported on 5 May that the cabinet decision would not take legal effect until Thailand sent formal notification to Cambodia. That notification has not been sent. Anutin Charnvirakul said after the cabinet meeting that negotiations on the maritime issue were expected to continue under UNCLOS. The Phnom Penh Post reported, after a 7 May meeting on the sidelines of the 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, that Thailand had informed Cambodia of its position and that both sides had agreed to use UNCLOS principles as the framework for future action. The cabinet act and its legal effect occupy different positions in the record.
The conciliation pathway proceeds under Annex V Section 2. The Annex V commission’s eventual report will be non-binding in form. The Secretary-General did not endorse Cambodia. What the record establishes is narrower and operationally usable: Cambodia is performing the conduct the Charter enumerates and Resolution 2788 instructs.
