Peace Building

The award of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay comes at a time when international law and the institutions charged with upholding it, face growing political pressure. Honouring a jurist with the Nobel Prize for Peace, whose career has been closely associated with human rights and international accountability is therefore more than a recognition of individual achievement. It is also an affirmation of the principles on which peaceful relations between states depend. Yet international institutions have never been insulated from political power. The history of the Nobel Peace Prize, like Cambodia’s own experience of international recognition and accountability, reveals the tensions between universal principles and geopolitical interests.

Amid rising tensions and mass displacement, Cambodia faces growing pressure to adopt a coordinated Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. This article examines the resilience of civil society organizations and ways to support effective WPS implementation.

As Cambodia closes in on 50 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, generational trauma persists in many households and the country continues to maneuver the legacy of the mass atrocities committed during the 1970s.