Boosting female political representation at July’s national election was the topic of a round-table discussion attended by dozens of political-party representatives, though none from the ruling party, in Phnom Penh yesterday.

Women are playing a more prominent role in Cambodian politics, according to women's rights activists and female politicians, even though the new fourth mandate of the National Assembly will again be a largely male affair.

The coalition of women's rights groups has requested that the government introduce gender quotas as a means of increasing women's participation in politics, according to a statement released Monday by Gender and Development for Cambodia (GADC).

A coalition of local NGOs has called on the government to take action to increase the number of women involved in politics by 2015, despite women's representation in the National Assembly increasing from 13 percent to around one in five in the current mandate.

For 20 years, Mu Sochua has been a voice for exploited Cambodians. As the Vietnam War spread to Cambodia in 1972, the then 18-year-old was exiled, with no chance to say goodbye to her parents, who later vanished under the Khmer Rouge regime.