Sotheavy Chan

Advisory Council - Cambodia

 Sotheavy Chan

Mrs. Sotheavy Chan, a native of the Kingdom of Cambodia, obtained her Master of Law Degree from the law faculty at Al-Farabi Kazakh State University in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 1994.  She resides in Phnom Penh.  In 1998, she served as Advisor for Research and Analysis at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the chief repository for documents and other archival materials relating to the Khmer Rouge regime and its aftermath.  In 2001, she was appointed Deputy General Secretary of Cambodian National Council for Women.  In 2002, she was appointed as Judge and Director of the Department of Civil Affairs, serving for two years.  In 2004, she was promoted to the position of Under-Secretary of State at Cambodia’s Ministry of Justice.  In 2007, she was again promoted to Secretary of State in the Justice Ministry.  She is a part-time instructor at Royal School of Administration (RSA/ERA), the Cambodian government’s premier civil service training institution. She currently chairs the working group of the Model Court Project. She is leading the Legal and Judicial Development Project in cooperation with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).  She is a member of Laws Development and Laws and Judicial Reform Group in Cambodia.

Madam Secretary Chan is involved in drafting Cambodia’s new Civil Code and Procedure, Penal Code and Procedure, Domestic Violence Law, Inter-country Adoption Law, and Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation. She is also involved in efforts to rewrite with other national legislation and regulations.  She conducted numerous research efforts that included national legislation in compliance with Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).