China’s expanding investment portfolio in Cambodia has brought into sharper focus the darker side of the Asian giant’s “development projects” in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation. And it is in the southwestern corner of Cambodia—known for its rich biodiversity, forest covered hills and bubbling rivers—where this ...

The U.S. has downgraded Cambodia in its latest global Trafficking in Persons Report for showing no discernable improvements in its efforts to combat human trafficking over the past year, the country’s first demotion in five years. The 2013 report cites an increase in the number ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday lashed out at the opposition party’s concerns over the interest rates charged by commercial banks to farmers. SRP lawmaker Yim Sovann said commercial banks in Cambodia charge customers very high interest rates, and said it is much higher than in other ...

Outstanding loans and deposits made at Cambodian banks grew by 32 per cent and 28 per cent respectively at the end of March this year from a year earlier, according to data from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC). The data from the NBC that the ...

The boom in high-rise buildings in Phnom Penh indicates the robust economic growth of the Kingdom, but this trend does not include the lower-end accommodation where most economic migrants to Phnom Penh rent.“Cheap rental accommodation plays a crucial role in providing appropriate settlements to those ...

Nathan Horton’s business model is straightforward. A professional photographer, Horton helps amateur photographers take pictures abroad. Photo tourism is an increasingly lucrative trade in Cambodia. Horton, who runs half-day jaunts in Phnom Penh and longer journeys into the provinces, is one of the practitioners capitalising on ...

The roads surrounding In­dependence Monument will once again be blocked off as a planned three-day opposition rally kicks off this morning, but military police maintained yesterday that they will not be as tightly enforced as they were when frustration over delays erupted into violence last ...

It has been one year since Cambodia announced that it was lifting its ban on intercountry adoptions beginning January 1, 2013, but despite praising Cambodia’s efforts to implement international regulations, countries that ban adoptions of Cambodians said this week that they were no closer to ...

Standard & Poor’s affirmed Thursday its ‘B’ long and short-term sovereign credit ratings for Cambodia, adding that the outlook for the long-term rating remained stable. At the same time, the US rating agency affirmed its ‘axBB-‘ long-term and ‘axB’ short-term ASEAN regional-scale ratings on the country. ...

RATANAKIRI PROVINCE, Cambodia – “I prefer the dam to the fish,” says middle-aged farmer Ton Noun, when asked his opinion on a proposed 400 megawatt dam on the Sesan river near his home in northeastern Cambodia. Then he chuckles and asks, “What fish?” That’s because ...

Malaysia has not yet received a draft agreement aimed at protecting Cambodian migrant domestic workers from abuse, but the government is pressing Cambodia to lift its two-year moratorium on sending maids, a Malaysian official said Wednesday. In October 2011, Prime Minister Hun Sen imposed a ban ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has released a nine-month status report on 2013’s illegal timber seizures, saying it had confiscated, among other things, more than 2,000 kilograms of rosewood – a figure that represents only a tiny fraction of seizures reported by the Post this ...

Transparency International Cambodia (TIC) on Thursday concluded in a report that official results of the July 28 national election released by the National Election Committee (NEC) do not reflect the will of the people due to widespread irregularities occurring both before and on election day. The ...

Two years out from the 2015 Millennium Development Goals’ target of universal access to education, Cambodia remains plagued by school infrastructure shortages, with a scarcity of classrooms and decrepit facilities that threaten students’ safety, NGOs and teachers say. At Slorkram Primary School in Battambang, teachers ...

The government is set to start re-deploying student volunteers to measure and demarcate plots of land across the country as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme, which was briefly suspended ahead of July’s national election. The program was announced by the prime minister in ...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and largest city, has seen rapid development in the last decade — numerous high-rises, large shopping malls and business centres as well as public parks are beautifying this city — in the meantime, slum-dwellers are also on the rise. According to the ...

Election observers on Wednesday released a joint statement regarding the fallout from the disputed national election, calling for a recount of votes in Kandal province’s Takhmao City, where a particularly large number of irregularities were reported. The Situation Room, a conglomerate of NGO’s and election monitors ...

The Ministry of Labor hopes that a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will see Cambodia resume sending domestic workers to Malaysia by February, but negotiations on the document have stalled after Malaysia recently rejected 90 percent of proposed provisions to protect workers’ rights. Most strikingly, Malaysia ...

Garment workers at a Kandal province factory ended their most recent strike Thursday after management agreed to pay out part of their wages for the days they were absent during a previous strike, while workers at a Phnom Penh factory went back on strike because ...

Preliminary research in two provinces has found that a lack of implementation of the domestic violence law means that women continue to suffer abuse and more needs to be done to ensure that attitudes change and perpetrators are held accountable. Katherine Brickell, senior lecturer in Human ...