The long-standing territorial dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, which has periodically escalated into armed conflict at their shared border, is indeed rooted in historical complexities stretching back over a century. The core of the disagreement revolves primarily around land adjacent to the ancient Preah Vihear temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The origins of the dispute can be traced to colonial-era maps and treaties from the early 20th century, particularly those drawn up during the period of French colonial rule in Indochina, when Cambodia was a French protectorate and Siam (now Thailand) was an independent kingdom. These maps, which included a watershed line to delineate parts of the border, were later interpreted differently by both nations.
The iconic Preah Vihear temple, a magnificent 11th-century Khmer temple, sits atop a 525-meter cliff in the Dangrek Mountains, overlooking Cambodia’s plains. While the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 1962 that the temple itself belonged to Cambodia, the precise demarcation of the surrounding border land was not fully resolved, leaving an area of contention immediately adjacent to the temple.
Tensions flared significantly in 2008 when Preah Vihear was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, a move that prompted renewed claims and military standoffs over access and control of the disputed border zone. This period saw a series of deadly clashes between Thai and Cambodian troops, particularly between 2008 and 2011, around the temple and other contested border areas. Both nations claimed sovereignty over the small plots of land near the temple that were not explicitly covered by the 1962 ICJ ruling.
Despite a subsequent ICJ ruling in 2013 that clarified the area immediately surrounding the temple was part of Cambodia’s territory, the broader challenge of fully demarcating the entire 800-kilometer shared border remains. Disagreements over existing maps, national sovereignty, and access rights to resources in the contested zones continue to be underlying factors that can reignite the long-standing friction between the two Southeast Asian neighbors.
