That's a very important question, because a tremendous amount of investment has been made into the judicial system and the development of the judiciary and the prosecution office over the last several decades, certainly since the early nineties.
On one level, while there are still significant problems with the judiciary, it's certainly a judiciary with a much higher capacity than it had 10, 15, or 20 years ago. I've had the pleasure of meeting with quite a number of Cambodian judges in different capacities over my time in Cambodia. Many of them, particularly the young ones, are determined to do a very good job and understand what's required of them in terms of independence and impartiality.
The difficulty is the fact that the ruling party is able to influence cases with a political component. It has been said that if a case has some political aspect to it or involves the interest of someone who is a member of the ruling party, then the judges will literally be contacted and have pressure brought to bear on them to decide the case in a certain way. As a result, we're looking for really systematic reforms.
One concrete reform that should be suggested to the government and called for is related to something that happened several years ago. I believe it was in 2014 that the Cambodian government passed three judicial reform laws in which they actually institutionalized the judiciary in the prosecution office, under the Ministry of Justice, which is part of the executive. There isn't a separation of powers, even de jure, in Cambodia at the moment. Those three judicial reform laws should be reformed, first and foremost.
Second, there needs to be continued investment in the judiciary and in the prosecution, and in particular the development of the new generation of judges and prosecutors so that in the future, slowly but surely, there would be leadership from within and they would be able to fulfill their prosecutorial and judicial duties in accordance with international human rights law and standards.