The Political Committee of the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie opened a two-day session in Siem Reap on Saturday with parliamentarians from fifteen countries seated alongside representatives of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. The opening ceremony was presided by Ouch Borith, Acting President of the Senate, and Cheang Vun, who chairs the National Assembly’s Committee on Economy, Finance, Banking and Auditing. Both serve as Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Cambodian Parliamentary Group to the APF.
The Senate press release issued earlier this week put registered participation at around 110, drawing delegations from seventeen APF member countries. The Political Committee meeting runs alongside a parallel workshop on digital transformation and artificial intelligence for parliamentarians, structured around understanding AI, the role of parliamentarians in AI ecosystems, regulatory frameworks, and the use of AI tools in parliamentary work. A working session on revising the APF statutes ran on Friday afternoon. Sideline programming includes visits to Angkor Wat and the Techo Peace Museum at the Cambodian Mine Action Centre.
The agenda for the political committee runs four items. One approves the summary of decisions taken at the APF Paris meeting in July 2025. Two are substantive: a discussion of the death penalty in Francophone member countries to find common ground, and monitoring of political conditions in the Francophone region. A fourth covers the role of Francophone parliaments in regional and global stability. The meeting’s stated theme reads “The Role of Francophone Parliaments in Strengthening Peace and Stability in the Region and the World.”
Cambodia is hosting all of this six months before the 20th Francophonie Summit opens in Phnom Penh on November 15 and 16, with French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit confirmed. The Siem Reap meeting sits at one upstream node of that arc.
The APF was founded in Luxembourg in 1967 with the support of Cambodian Head of State Norodom Sihanouk, alongside Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, Niger’s President Hamani Diori and Lebanese President Charles Helou. Cambodia is founding-era, not late entrant. The Cambodian section of the APF currently registers 123 members including 25 women.
Article 32 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia reads: “Everybody shall have the rights to life, freedom, and personal security. Capital punishment is prohibited.” The provision has been in force since 1993. Cambodia attends a discussion of the death penalty across Francophone member countries from the position of a state that has prohibited capital punishment constitutionally for over three decades.
The Agence française de développement has financed 92 projects for a cumulative 927 million euros in Cambodia since 1993. The January 2024 Élysée joint declaration recorded 215 million euros across three conventions and named “pluralisme politique” and “pleine protection des droits fondamentaux” among the framework principles. The same declaration recorded Cambodia’s candidacy to host the 20th Francophonie Summit in 2026 and France’s welcome of that candidacy. The Third Session of Cambodia-France Bilateral Political Consultations met in Phnom Penh on December 18, 2025 with the strategic partnership for 2026 as the working horizon. Olivier Richard, France’s ambassador to Cambodia, told AKP the summit returns to the Asia-Pacific region for the first time since Vietnam hosted in 1997.
At her March 2024 meeting with APF delegation head Bruno Fuchs in Paris, Cambodian National Assembly President Khuon Sodary said Cambodia “fully supports the strategic framework of the Francophone parliament 2023-2030”. Cambodia hosts as a country where the institutional channel runs while the speaking community has narrowed to several hundred thousand speakers.
A Cambodian delegation led by Kheng Samvada, Vice Chairperson of the National Assembly’s 7th Committee, attended the APF “Women, Peace and Security: Political Urgency” workshop in New York from March 10 to 12. Hun Manet’s first official foreign visit as Prime Minister was to France. Olivier Richard told AKP the summit’s substantive focus includes “the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the role of the French language in this technological revolution.” The AI workshop running alongside the Political Committee meeting in Siem Reap meets that focus at the parliamentary level.
The Cambodian Mine Action Centre houses the Techo Peace Museum and carries the country’s institutional record on demining, victim assistance, and Mine Ban Treaty engagement. The agenda item on Francophone parliaments and peace meets that record at the sideline gate.