20 Riels World Cup Football 1994

Cambodia issued this coin while still governed by the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea transitional administration, just as UNTAC was negotiating the Paris Peace Accords that would formally end over a decade of civil conflict. The numismatic program from this period was effectively a hard-currency revenue exercise — coins sold abroad to collectors, not circulated domestically in a country whose economy had been reduced to barter under the Khmer Rouge and had only reintroduced currency in 1980 after Pol Pot abolished it entirely in 1975.

The three-year lead time before the 1994 tournament was standard for this class of commemorative licensing.