Civil society

Days after warning that his ruling party was as capable and willing to protest as the opposition, and threatening a barbed-wire fence in Freedom Park to divide the two groups, Prime Minister Hun Sen was yesterday talking multi-party reform. Speaking at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom ...

The Labor Ministry in a statement Thursday insisted that unions were still free to register as entities recognized by the government, a day after a ministry spokesman said that union registration had been effectively suspended for the foreseeable future. Free Trade Union (FTU) president Chea Mony ...

The World Bank’s ombudsman office says it will assess a complaint from indigenous groups in Ratanakkiri province that a bank-supported company has damaged the forest and surrounding communities. Seventeen different groups joined in the complaint, claiming the Hoang Anh Gia Lai rubber company, which receives ...

Following a complaint from the Free Trade Union (FTU) over the Ministry of Labor’s refusal to register 10 local branches of its organization, a ministry official said Wednesday that the constitutional right to freedom of association has been suspended until a new trade union law ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al failed to meet the villagers locked in a long-running land dispute with the Chinese-owned company Union Development Group (UDG) on Wednesday, despite visiting company officials in Koh Kong province, according to a rights worker and a provincial official. Mr. Sam Al ...

Information Minister Khieu Kanharith on Wednesday revealed plans to split state-run TVK into three separate television stations but reiterated that no frequencies are available for independent radio broadcaster Mom Sonando. Mr. Sonando, who owns Beehive radio station, has over the past several years repeatedly requested a ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

The beating death of a Vietnamese-Cambodian earlier this month was the first incident in several years that some are calling a hate crime. Leaders of the Vietnamese community in Cambodia, as well as the Vietnamese Embassy, say they want the Cambodian authorities to pay more attention ...

As illegal logging con­tinues to take a toll on the country’s woodlands, civil society groups yesterday called on the government to stay true to its commitment of providing an extra two million hectares of community forest by 2029. During a two-day conference in the capital, participants ...

Garment workers’ calls for a $160 minimum wage are justified and should be honored, a new report by an international team of academics and labor experts has found. The authors—including a team from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, South Korean and ...

Four Vietnamese rubber firms are responsible for destroying an estimated 1,000 hectares of community forest, including an indigenous graveyard, in Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district, a group of NGOs have claimed. The land dispute involving 196 families living in Talav commune dates back to 2011, Chhay Thy, ...

Cambodian women are bumping up against a steadfast glass ceiling, according to an annual report by the Cambodian National Council for Women. The report, released yesterday, tracks what the government has done to execute the prime minister’s 16 recommendations regarding women’s access to and engagement in ...

Lawmakers-elect from the Cambodia National Rescue Party are scheduled today to visit families in Koh Kong province affected by a long-running land dispute with Union Development Group, just weeks after the company destroyed dozens of homes there. Rights groups say that Chinese-owned Union Development has burned ...

A coalition of 18 labor unions and associations is today set to begin the first phase of a nationwide labor strike in the garment sector by calling on workers in about 100 factories to boycott working overtime, according to union leaders. Despite efforts by the government ...

Every day, five people die in traffic accidents in Cambodia – a number the government is hoping to reduce with a new policy aimed at cutting traffic accidents by 50 per cent in 2020. The National Policy on Road Safety, passed by the Council of Ministers ...

Transparency International (T.I.) Cambodia and education NGOs on Friday held a conference titled “Promoting Integrity to Strengthen the Quality of Education in Cambodia,” where ideas were put forward on stamping out corruption in schools. “We need to mobilize the students themselves in tracking the delivery ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday said it would delay issuing a scheduled verdict against six people tried for intentional violence against police and property damage during an opposition protest on Phnom Penh’s Kbal Thnal overpass in September, saying that the case was very ...

The high-ranking government officials and global clothing brand representatives who took part in a meeting in Phnom Penh on Wednesday both raised concern​s​ about the media coverage of last month’s lethal repression of a nationwide strike by garment workers and its aftermath. The meeting was called ...

About 30 law students on Friday participated in the seventh Client Counseling Competition to put their newly acquired professional skills into practice and compete for a trip to the international competition in Puerto Rico in April. “We created the case based on this year’s theme, ...

In anticipation of today’s scheduled Municipal Court verdict for six men facing charges of violence and property damage in connection with a September clash on Phnom Penh’s Kbal Thnal overpass, rights groups yesterday called for their acquittal. A statement from Human Rights Watch (HRW) released yesterday ...

Borei Keila residents on Thursday cast a symbolic curse on the people they say are responsible for making their lives a misery since violently evicting them from their homes two years ago. In the latest development in the long-running dispute, security guards and riot police last ...

A man who intended to release birds at Freedom Park yesterday as a way of calling for those wrongfully imprisoned to be freed was himself detained on the way to the ceremony, rights group Adhoc said. The man, identified as Pheakdey, 35, was among nine people ...

The bodies of a 39-year-old woman and her 18-month-old nephew were recovered Thursday two days after a riverbank collapse caused their home in Kandal Province’s Khsach Kandal district to plunge into the Mekong River while they slept, but the woman’s 3-year-old son has not yet ...

Although human-trafficking cases dealt with by the Ministry of Interior decreased significantly in 2013, suggesting progress was being made in tackling the crime, trafficking in persons continues to be a major challenge for the government, the ministry said in its annual report on Tuesday. According to ...