Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to pursue a series of trust-building measures aimed at stabilising a fragile ceasefire, following a diplomatic meeting on the sidelines of the 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, in the southern Philippines. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet met with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose government brokered the talks in its role as ASEAN chair. The two leaders agreed to task their foreign ministers with advancing "practical confidence-building measures, starting with measures where we have common ground," Anutin said at a subsequent press conference.
The meeting produced no major breakthrough — none was widely expected given the depth of the rift between Bangkok and Phnom Penh — but both sides committed to resuming dialogue and exercising restraint. Marcos confirmed that the ASEAN Observer Team, which has been monitoring the border, will have its mandate extended for a further three months until July. Hun Manet, for his part, reiterated Cambodia's position that "the border cannot be changed, nor determined by force or through fait accompli," and called for the immediate resumption of survey and demarcation work under the bilateral Joint Border Commission established in 2000.
The talks follow two outbreaks of armed conflict last year — one in July and a more severe one in December — in which Thai forces conducted air strikes and both sides exchanged artillery and rocket fire across their disputed land border. Dozens were reported killed, and hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced. A ceasefire agreed on 27 December remains in effect but is deeply fragile: soldiers remain deployed along large stretches of the frontier, cross-border trade has been severely curtailed, and the two prime ministers had not met since a peace accord signed at October's ASEAN Summit in Malaysia — an agreement that ultimately failed to prevent the December flare-up.
On the ground in Cambodia, the human cost of the conflict remains stark. More than 34,000 people — over 11,000 of them children — remain in internal displacement camps in provinces such as Preah Vihear, Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey, according to Cambodia's Ministry of Interior. Families describe surviving on aid donations, with children missing school, experiencing psychological trauma, and preoccupied by fears of renewed fighting. Aid workers warn that if displacement and economic hardship persist, many children may not return to formal education at all.
The diplomatic path forward remains uncertain. Two days before the summit meeting, Thailand cancelled a 2001 memorandum of understanding with Cambodia on joint offshore energy exploration in the Gulf of Thailand, a move Cambodia received with disappointment. Past agreements have failed to hold, and Thai military forces continue to occupy small pockets of Cambodian territory seized during the December fighting — a point of contention Phnom Penh has raised repeatedly. Analysts note, however, that Anutin's decisive re-election in February may give him greater political room to resist nationalist pressure and pursue compromise, while Cambodia's mounting economic losses from the conflict add urgency to reaching a durable settlement.