Cambodia

Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Mainland Southeast Asia bordered by Thailand, Laos and Vietnam with a coastline on the Gulf of Thailand, spanning about 181,035 square kilometers around the Mekong river and Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest lake, with a population of about 17 million, mostly ethnic Khmer, and Phnom Penh as its capital and most populous city. In 802 AD Jayavarman II declared himself king and united the Khmer princes of Chenla, founding the Khmer Empire, an Indianized kingdom that spread Hinduism and then Buddhism through the region and built Angkor Wat; the empire declined from the fifteenth century, and Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1863. It declared independence from France in 1953 after Japanese occupation, was drawn into civil war during the Vietnam War era, and endured rule by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, whose Cambodian genocide ended only when Vietnamese forces ousted the regime; the 1991 Paris Peace Accords and a subsequent United Nations peacekeeping mission restored peace, established a new constitution and held the 1993 general election, though a 1997 coup consolidated power under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party. Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy and de jure multi-party state that functions as a de facto one-party state under CPP dominance, is designated a least developed country by the United Nations, and relies economically on agriculture alongside growing textiles, construction, garments and tourism sectors, with Khmer as the official language and Buddhism the most widely practiced religion.