Abstract

Globalisation is radically reconfiguring traditional understandings of constitutional law. A prime example of this trend would be the International Finance Corporation, whose Performance Standards have been described as a private-law Bill of Rights. Focusing on a complaint brought to the IFC’s Compliance Assessment Ombudsman by 17 villages in northeastern Cambodia, this article investigates how supranational frameworks interact with local identities and normative orders by highlighting how the IFC’s Performance Standard 7 on Indigenous Peoples has allowed certain communities to assert identities and associated rights that are not explicitly provided for in the national Constitution. In the process, I ask whether the IFC can be understood as having played the traditionally constitutional role of constituting a people, albeit at a subnational level, or recognizing an identity with specific legal privileges in Cambodia. Similarly, in discussing ongoing attempts to broker a settlement between the parties, the paper explains how the IFC’s engagement with the normative (legal) orders of the communities has pushed the dispute into a different ­ontological realm. The result is a pluralistic picture of transnational law in Cambodia, in which we can better see the way in which nation-states and their constitutions are at times being superseded by transnational actors.

摘要

全球化正在从根本上重新配置对宪法的传统理解。这种趋势的一个典型例子是国际金融公司，其绩效标准被描述为私法权利法案。本文关注柬埔寨东北部 17 个村庄向国际金融公司合规评估监察员提出的投诉，通过强调国际金融公司关于土著人民的绩效标准 7 如何允许某些社区主张身份和国家宪法未明确规定的相关权利。在此过程中，我问国际金融公司是否可以被理解为发挥了传统的宪法作用，即组成一个民族，尽管是在地方层面，或承认在柬埔寨具有特定法律特权的身份。同样，在讨论各方之间调解和解的持续尝试时，本文解释了 IFC 与社区规范（法律）秩序的接触如何将争议推向了不同的本体论领域。结果是柬埔寨跨国法的多元化图景，我们可以更好地看到民族国家及其宪法有时被跨国行为者取代的方式。