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From Our Own Correspondent: Cambodia's strongman bows out

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Outgoing Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen

05/08/2023 GMT

Cambodia's strongman bows out

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Cambodia's strongman bows out

Keeping it in the family: Cambodia's prime minister Hun Sen is handing over to his son

After almost 40 years, Cambodia's prime minister Hun Sen is stepping down, to be succeeded by his son; plus, migrant stories from Pakistan and Romania; and Lebanon's goat-herders

Max Pearson introduces correspondent reports from Cambodia, Pakistan, Romania and Lebanon.

One of Asia's longest-serving leaders, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, has announced he's stepping down and handing power to his son. Hun Sen has run Cambodia since 1985, first in a Vietnam-installed communist regime, then under a UN-installed multi-party system, and more recently as an increasingly intolerant autocrat. Jonathan Head reflects on how Hun Sen has shaped modern Cambodia. And how the succession might go.

Many of the would-be migrants on board a fishing trawler that capsized off the Greek coast in June - it's believed killing several hundred people - were from Pakistan. What drove them to leave their country? And to put themselves at the mercy of the people traffickers? In order to find out, Caroline Davies spoke to one smuggler, the police trying to stop the human trafficking, and to a family whose teenage sons died in the shipwreck.

Romania is a country that has also seen many of its citizens go abroad in search of work and a better future. But is that beginning to change? Romania's economy is booming, and for the first time, people are moving back. Some are Romanian emigrants returning home; but as Tessa Dunlop discovered, there are also an increasing number of foreign workers, attracted by the country's new-found confidence. 

As wildfires have ripped through forested hillsides around the Mediterranean in recent weeks, Lebanon has been watching nervously. Its own woodlands of oak, cedar and pine were badly burnt by forest fires in 2021. But experts hope that enlisting the help of local goat and sheep-herders might prevent worse outbreaks this year. Lemma Shehadi went to find out.

Producer: Louise Hidalgo
Editor: Bridget Harney
Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman

(Image: Outgoing Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Credit: Kith Serey/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

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