National symbols of Cambodia

On this page

1. Constitution
2. Flag
3. Anthem
4. National animal
5. Decree of 2005
6. References

On this page

1. Constitution
2. Flag
3. Anthem
4. National animal
5. Decree of 2005
6. References

The flag of Cambodia

The national symbols of Cambodia include the flag, the anthem Nokor Reach (នគររាជ), the motto "Nation, Religion, King" and plants and animals named by decree.

Constitution

The 1993 constitution sets out several of these symbols. Article 4 gives the motto of the kingdom as "Nation, Religion, King", and article 5 makes Khmer the official language and script. Article 6 names Phnom Penh as the capital and leaves the flag, the anthem and the coat of arms to three annexes.

Flag

The flag has three horizontal bands, blue, red and blue, with the red band twice as wide as each blue one, and a white image of Angkor Wat at its center. A description of the flag reproduced by Flags of the World gives the meaning of its colors: blue for the monarchy, red for the nation and white for religion. The same text says the pedestal of the temple stands for Mount Meru and the structure of the universe in Khmer cosmology, and that the flag as a whole reflects the motto "Nation, Religion, King".

Before 1948 the flag showed a white Angkor Wat on red, framed by a blue border. The banded design was adopted in October 1948; Flags of the World gives the date as October 20 on its history page and as October 29 in the description on its main page. It stayed in use until 1970, when the Khmer Republic brought in a flag of its own on October 9 of that year. Later governments used other flags, and under the United Nations transitional administration Cambodia used a United Nations blue flag with a white outline map of Cambodia on it. A contributor to Flags of the World adds that the State of Cambodia flag was used alongside it from 1991 to 1993. The 1948 flag came back in 1993. The history page dates its return to June 30; the main page gives September 24, the day the monarchy was restored.

Anthem

The national anthem is Nokor Reach, "Royal City". The historian David Chandler writes that it dates from 1939, under King Sisowath Monivong. François Perrichot, the head of the royal music, wrote the slow melody, drawing on a Cambodian folk tune. The words are by the Buddhist monk Chuon Nath, who later compiled the standard Khmer dictionary.

Monivong sponsored the song in May 1939, but it became the national anthem only in 1942, a year after Norodom Sihanouk came to the throne. It was dropped in 1970, and the three governments that followed each had an anthem of their own. Chandler writes that Sihanouk kept Nokor Reach after giving up the throne in 1955 and pressed for its return when he became king again in 1993.

National animal

The kouprey is a wild ox that lived in open forest and grassland in northern Cambodia and the far south of Laos. It became the national animal in the 1960s, when the king named it a symbol of national heritage. A royal decree of 2005 changed its title to "national mammal". The species was first described by scientists in 1937, and the last confirmed sighting was in northern Cambodia in 1969. The International Union for Conservation of Nature assesses it as most likely extinct but has not listed it as extinct, since parts of its possible range have not been surveyed enough.

Decree of 2005

A royal decree of March 21, 2005, named the palm tree as the national tree. Lim Sokun, a secretary of state at the Ministry of Agriculture, told The Cambodia Daily that this decree chose other symbols too, among them a flower, a fish, a cow and a fruit. In 2005, the paper wrote, repeated droughts had left some farmers unable to grow enough rice, so they were felling their palm trees to sell, and the ministry was weighing a subdecree to protect the trees. Most of the country's estimated 3.5 million palm trees grew on private land.