Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia

A former member of the US Congress from Maine, Tom Andrews is Director of the Southeast Asia Human Rights Project at Harvard University’s Asia Center and has a Washington DC based consulting practice, Tom Andrews Strategic Services. He has worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and parliamentarians, NGOs and political parties in several countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Algeria, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine and Yemen.

Andrews served as General Secretary of "The Nobel Peace Laureate Campaign for Aung San Suu Kyi and the People of Burma" in 2001 and was a consultant for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma and the Euro-Burma Network. He has run advocacy NGOs including Win Without War and United to End Genocide, led an education institute at the University of Maine and served in the Maine House of Representatives and the Maine Senate before being elected to represent the First Congressional District of Maine in the United States Congress. He lives with his wife and son in Fairfax, Virginia outside of Washington DC.

From 2020-2026, Tom Andrews served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.

Mandate of the Special Rapporteur

The mandate of the Special Rapporteur derives from the 1973 Paris Peace Accords (article 17 of the Agreement on a comprehensive political settlement of the Cambodia conflict and article 3 of the Agreement concerning the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and inviolability, neutrality and national unity of Cambodia).

In September 2019, the Human Rights Council, in resolution 42/37, decided "to extend by two years the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia through the appointment of a special rapporteur to carry out the former functions of the Special Representative to the Secretary-General, and request[ed] the Special Rapporteur to report on the implementation of his/her mandate to the Council at its forty-fifth and forty-eight sessions and to engage in a constructive manner with the Government of Cambodia for the further improvement of the situation of human rights in the country."

In October 2025, Human Rights Council Resolution 60/33 extended the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia for two years and requested the Special Rapporteur to report on the implementation of his mandate to the Human Rights Council at its sixty-third session in September/October 2026 and sixty-sixth session in September/October 2027.

The Special Rapporteur is an independent expert. OHCHR provides secretariat services to the Special Rapporteur during his missions to Cambodia, as it does to all missions from the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.