Following a period which saw one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in Asia in the 1990s, Cambodia has become one of the few countries to have reversed its HIV epidemic, from an estimated prevalence of 2% (among adults aged 15-49) in 1998 to 0.6% in 2011

Social protection is one of the pillars of the 5-year UN Development Assistance Framework in Cambodia. Social protection is needed to reduce people’s vulnerability to socioeconomic risks and impoverishment and to enable the poor and vulnerable populations improve their livelihoods and productivity in the long term.

High level political support has been the key to Cambodia’s success under the second National Strategic Plan (NSP II). The epidemic is in decline and over 90% of eligible people living with HIV (PLHIV) receive treatment. Cambodia is one of the few countries in the world that has achieved its Millennium Development Goals related to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). However, the gains made in reversing the epidemic trends will remain fragile as long as pockets of high prevalence persist among subpopulations of entertainment workers, men who have sex with men (MSM) and injecting drug users (IDU). The primary driver of Cambodia’s HIV epidemic continues to be heterosexual transmission between entertainment workers and their clients and other sexual partners. Spousal transmission occurs when clients of entertainment workers infect their wives and subsequently, the infants born to infected mothers.

Cambodia has reached many milestones in its response to HIV over the past decades. Despite this progress, accessing high risk individuals has become a greater challenge in recent years with stronger enforcement of new and existing government anti-drug strategies and the new drug control law, all of which emphasize a punitive approach to addressing drug use in Cambodian society.