Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued its second statement in sixteen days on the 2001 maritime memorandum on 24 April 2026, reaffirming commitment to an agreement that Thailand’s National Security Council had approved scrapping the day before.
The statement, No. SM 14/2026 MFA.IC, opens with explicit reference to Cambodia’s 8 April pre-emptive position: “As already expressed on 8 April 2026, it is deeply regrettable if Thailand decides to unilaterally withdraw from the MOU-2001.” It does not declare breach. It does not invoke the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It does not name UNCLOS, the framework Thailand has announced as its substitute. It restates that MOU-2001 “embodies the goodwill of both nations” and that Cambodia “remains firmly and consistently committed to both the letter and the spirit” of the agreement.
Thailand’s NSC on 23 April approved a proposal to terminate MOU-2001, the framework governing overlapping maritime claims in the Gulf of Thailand and known in Thailand as MOU 44, and replace it with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, with the matter to be forwarded to the Cabinet. Speaking at Government House at 11:10 that morning, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the process would be expedited, and that the Thai cabinet had authority to revoke the agreement unilaterally and would not need to formally notify Cambodia.
Royal Thai Navy Chief of Staff Adm Thadawut Thatpitakkul, in a separate interview after the meeting, made the calculation behind the pivot explicit. “Now that Cambodia is a UNCLOS member, we can use the member-state forum to conduct talks and negotiations in line with international principles, with the protection of Thailand’s interests as the foremost priority,” he told Nation Thailand.
The architecture of the convention Thailand intends to invoke says the opposite. While MOU-2001 stood, it shielded Thailand from the compulsory dispute settlement procedures of UNCLOS Part XV under Article 281, which permits parties to a separate dispute-settlement agreement to remain within their bilateral framework. Cancellation removes that shield. Both Cambodia and Thailand have separately filed Article 298(1)(a) declarations excluding their maritime boundary from compulsory adjudication; those declarations leave intact a conciliation proviso the bilateral instrument was keeping inactive. Cancellation activates the proviso. Cambodia’s procedural options under the convention expand at the moment Thailand commits to leaving the bilateral framework that constrained them.
The 23 April decision continued an institutional progression that began on 31 March, when Anutin, after summoning his Defence Minister and the Royal Thai Navy chief of staff to Bhumjaithai Party headquarters, said: “I’ve made my decision. For me, that means cancellation. The cancellation of the 2001 MOU will be included in the policy statement to Parliament.” The policy statement on 9-10 April followed. The NSC stage cleared on 23 April. The Cabinet stage has not.
Thailand’s UNCLOS depositary notification of 25 May 2011 excluded all three categories of disputes from the compulsory settlement procedures of Part XV, Section 2, including disputes over Articles 15, 74, and 83 on sea boundary delimitation. Cambodia made the same exclusion when it ratified the convention on 6 February 2026, with entry into force on 8 March 2026. The mirror declarations close binding adjudication on the boundary itself to either party. They do not close the conciliation door. The proviso embedded in Article 298(1)(a) requires states making the exclusion to accept compulsory conciliation under Annex V where bilateral negotiation under Articles 74(3) and 83(3) fails. Until cancellation, Article 281 and the bilateral-instrument carveout in Article 298(1)(a)(iii) kept that proviso inactive for Thailand. Cancellation activates it.
MOU-2001 contains no termination clause and no dispute resolution clause. The Vienna Convention’s default rule, codified in Article 56, requires twelve months’ notice for unilateral withdrawal from agreements that lack such a clause and that do not by their nature imply withdrawal. Thailand is not a party to the convention but is bound by its provisions as customary international law. No public record exists of a formal Article 65 notification. Anutin’s position that Thailand may cancel the agreement unilaterally without consulting Cambodia rests on no provision in the document itself.
Thai government statements on the same instrument have moved in three directions inside eighteen months. In November 2024, the Thai Public Relations Department published an assessment by then-Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Russ Jalichandra calling MOU 44 “Thailand’s most effective tool” for protecting Thai interests in maritime boundary and resource-sharing negotiations. In August 2025, Assistant FM Ras Chaleechan warned that unilateral cancellation “might not hold up under international law” and that the agreements “function more like a ‘treaty’ and would typically require mutual consent to be dissolved,” Nation Thailand reported. On 23 April 2026, the NSC approved cancellation. The Thai Cabinet had attempted termination once before, in 2009, and reversed the decision in 2014 after institutional review concluded the framework was Thailand’s strongest legal position.
Cambodia’s diplomatic instruments compose a consistent record. The Cambodian side of the Joint Boundary Commission, through the State Secretariat of Border Affairs, issued a Note Verbale on 7 April proposing a special meeting in Siem Reap between 17 and 22 April. Thailand declined the proposed dates, with Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow citing the need to reconstitute Thailand’s Joint Boundary Commission delegation. The 8 April Cambodia MFA statement, issued the day before Anutin’s parliamentary policy statement, was the first government position on the dispute from either side. The 24 April statement repeats the same architecture: regret conditional on completion, restatement of MOU-2001’s continuing validity, no escalation. Cambodia entered the UNCLOS framework on 8 March 2026, before Thailand’s institutional movement to invoke that framework as a substitute for the bilateral instrument began.
The Thai government’s case for cancellation rests on time-as-failure. The framing locates the defect in the framework rather than in the political conditions of the underlying claim. It assumes that twenty-five years without final agreement reflects MOU-2001’s design rather than the difficulty of delimiting an overlap covering approximately 26,000 square kilometres of energy-bearing seabed. An analysis published in 9DashLine by William J. Jones and Dr Thanachate Wisaijorn argued the move “may be viewed cynically” as advancing “corporate and elite interests by using cheap nationalism.” Thailand’s own MFA in November 2024 reached a parallel finding by inverse: the framework worked because no party could exit it without exposing itself.
A second reading is available. Cancellation may be a calculated trade. MOU-2001 binds joint development and delimitation as an indivisible package, its safeguard clause stating that all actions taken under the agreement are “without prejudice to the maritime claims of either party” only “subject to entry into force of the delimitation.” Thailand cannot pursue resource development in the Overlapping Claims Area without simultaneous boundary delimitation. Termination dissolves that package. Bangkok would emerge into a Part XV environment in which Articles 74(3) and 83(3) impose only “best efforts” cooperation obligations, and Annex V conciliation, while available, produces a recommendation rather than a binding award. The exposure may be the price Thailand is willing to pay for a unilateral resource pathway the bilateral framework denied it. On either reading, the same fact is uncomfortable for the Thai position: the cancelled framework was the protection.
The 24 April Cambodia statement does not commit to any of these readings. It commits to the agreement, to the goodwill that produced it, and to the proposition that the legal status of any future Thai termination remains open.
