A/HRC/45/56 I. Introduction 1. Prepared pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 42/37, the present report outlines the role and achievements of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in assisting the Government and people of Cambodia in the promotion and protection of human rights from 1 June 2019 to 31 May 2020. It provides an update to the report of the Secretary-General on the same subject, presented to the Human Rights Council at its forty-second session (A/HRC/42/31). OHCHR received factual comments on the draft report from the Government of Cambodia on 1 July 2020, and these have been included where appropriate. 2. Throughout the reporting period, OHCHR proceeded with technical cooperation activities with the judiciary, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Environment, the Cambodian Human Rights Committee, the National Committee against Torture, the Disability Action Council, and other governmental and civil society actors. OHCHR continued to monitor the human rights situation, including with regard to land and housing rights, the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms, the right to participation in civic and political life, the conduct of trials, and the condition of places of detention. OHCHR also adapted its technical cooperation activities to respond to the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Cambodia. 3. OHCHR continued to work closely with the United Nations system in Cambodia, chairing the human rights theme group. It supported the mainstreaming of human rights within the United Nations Development Assistance Framework for 2019–2023, and co-led an outcome group on participation and accountability. OHCHR also supported joint United Nations actions, including in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to advance human rights in Cambodia.1 II. Context 4. OHCHR provided technical assistance to the Government in a shifting context. While Cambodia was spared the scale of COVID-19 incidence experienced in some other countries, the pandemic required a significant pivot in OHCHR activities, balanced against the need for continuity of engagement on core issues of concern. 5. OHCHR offered technical assistance to the Government, seeking to ensure that the Government’s COVID-19 response was aligned with its obligation to take all necessary steps to prevent, treat and control the disease as a component of the right to health.2 To ensure that no one is left behind, OHCHR advocated for the adoption of special measures to protect groups and individuals in situations of particular vulnerability to the pandemic, including indigenous peoples and minorities, persons deprived of their liberty, and poor and rural communities. 6. Also in that context, on 28 April 2020, the Law on the Management of the Nation in State of Emergency came into effect. Drafted in response to COVID-19 without public consultation, it empowers the Government to declare a state of emergency for up to three months, which can be extended for a further three months without review. It also allows for restrictions on – inter alia – the exercise of freedoms of movement and assembly, the right to obtain information, the right to privacy and the right to work. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia and other special procedures of the Human 1 2 2 Art. 12 (2) (c) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Cambodia is a party, requires the Government to take steps for the prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases. Art. 72 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia also requires the Government to give “full consideration to disease prevention and medical treatment”. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/COVID19Guidance.aspx.