About a decade ago, global manufacturing firms staged a mass exodus to Asia in search of low-cost alternatives to increasing domestic wage demands and operational costs. The consensus was the continued development of a regional supply chain that had formed in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, ...

Construction of a special economic zone (SEZ) near the Vietnamese border in Ratanakkiri province’s eastern O’Yad­aw district is on track, but who exactly will avail of the facility and its services remains a mystery—even for senior provincial officials. The latest announced venture of agro-industry land concession ...

Trade unions may have failed to get a stay-at-home strike for higher wages off the ground after the Khmer New Year earlier this month. But a strike for bonus pay is picking up steam in Svay Rieng Province, where some 20,000 garment workers protested at ...

Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...

In 2011, Oeun Phirun took out a $450 loan from the Asian Development Bank, using half to buy a used motorbike and spending the rest on a small flock of ducks and chickens he hoped to raise. His family and about 1,000 others have been evicted ...

Just two months after the contested national election, commune officials across the country on Tuesday began the annual 20-day process of registering voters, while the National Election Committee (NEC) announced that 270,000 duplicated names would be removed from the voter list used in July. NEC Secretary-General ...

A new project by the government and Japan’s aid agency seeks to assist small companies in Cam­bodia that are in need of specialist advice in order to develop and keep up with competitors in neighboring Asean countries. The aim of the two-year program, called “Strategic Strengthening ...

A weeklong strike by Cambodian garment workers turned deadly Friday as police shot and killed at least four people and wounded several others in an attempt to break up a protest for higher wages. The violence came after weeks of escalating political and labor unrest marked ...

In an epic, six-hour address in September, Prime Minister Hun Sen apologized for the government’s many “problems” and promised a more reformist government over the next five years of his rule. Targeting corruption, deforestation and the lack of transparency across government sectors, the prime minister made ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on a U.N. special envoy to press the country’s opposition to rejoin parliament and negotiate an end to the country’s political stalemate since disputed July elections, an official said Wednesday. Hun Sen met with U.N. special envoy for human ...

While the opposition party steps up its efforts to persuade the international community to cut ties with a government it says was formed by a “constitutional coup”, lawyers and analysts yesterday questioned whether the party’s reasoning has any legal basis. In a letter sent to the ...

Speaking on the first day of the op­position’s three-day mass demonstration in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park last month, CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann announced to an electrified crowd that the party would be seeking its own television station in negotiations with the ruling CPP. With the ...

On the morning of September 23, anti-eviction champion Tep Vanny was grappling with a legion of security guards blocking the entrance of the Daun Penh district offices while fellow protesters dismantled a razor-wire barricade nearby. The next day, she was on a plane to Washington ...

Cambodian political analysts said Prime Minister Hun Sen needs to make “serious and deep reforms” over the next five years to restore his popularity after his party survived with a slim majority in July’s disputed general election. Sok Touch, deputy director of the Royal Academy ...

Senior opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua walked into Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Wednesday morning, trailed by a small group of news photographers, and stopped to pose in front of about 100 municipal riot police exercising in the park. Ms. Sochua’s small act of defiance against the ...

Employees at a Taiwanese-owned shoe factory in Kompong Speu province where two workers were killed when one of the building’s floors collapsed on Thursday have been ordered back to work today, despite ongoing concerns from labor activists about the building’s safety. While conceding that some parts ...

The first vice president of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) on Monday blamed some of the deaths in this year’s floods on “careless” mothers. “Maybe the mothers are careless, maybe they don’t pay much attention to their children, so they drown,” NCDM First Vice ...

Like most millennium-old structures discovered in the forests of Cambodia, the locals had known all along about this one. Jarai minority villagers in this remote spot in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district not only knew about it, but they revered the red-brick temple, using it as a ...

As hundreds of riot police conducted protest suppression drills in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Monday morning, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s mansion in the center of the city was the focal point of a demonstration by some 2,000 garment factory workers. Municipal police, along with 16 ...

The price of food spiked this month, and Cambodia’s low-paid garment workers are feeling the effects. Meat, vegetables, toothbrushes, beauty accessories and even the plastic bags they get packed in have all seen a sharp bump up in price this month, some items by as much ...