Constitution and rights

Yim Sovann and Mu Sochua, both prominent lawmakers of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), failed in votes for the posts of chairpersons of the National Assembly’s commissions in confidential votes on Wednesday. The CNRP nominated male-lawmaker Yim Sovann as the head of the National ...

Civil society advocates – who last week called on parliament to consider amending the constitution to limit prime ministers to two terms in office – are now trying to enlist former premiers to back their proposal. The group, which includes well-known political analysts and representatives of ...

This week lawmakers from Cambodia’s opposition party are being voted onto 10 parliamentary commissions. This is a key part of a political deal in which the opposition finally agreed to take its 55 seats in parliament, ending its year-long boycott over alleged vote-rigging in the ...

The Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP), and civil society groups in Cambodia have asked the National Assembly and ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) to keep Mrs. Khuon Sodary as second vice president of the National Assembly. In a statement issued on Monday, the groups ...

123 lawmakers from ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) will vote on August 26, 2014 to elect new leadership of the National Assembly. According to the general commissariat of the National Assembly, the agenda will include: Vote for Nguon Nhil ...

In March, the Ministry of Labor for the first time began requiring union leaders to submit proof they had no previous criminal convictions before they would be allowed to register a new union or local branch. Now, the country’s leading unions say worker representatives are struggling ...

Local NGOs are urging the new National Assembly to pass term limits for the prime minister, to prevent a “dictatorship” in Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled Cambodia in some capacity for 30 years, but following discussions in Phnom Penh, rights groups and development NGOs ...

The 123 Cambodian Members of Parliament (MPs) from the ruling and opposition parties will vote on Tuesday next week to elect their leadership, Prime Minister Hun Sen, vice president of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), said on Monday. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP)’s ...

Phnom Penh security forces on Sunday blocked activists from riding their bicycles around the city to promote their campaign against the pending construction of a hydropower dam in Koh Kong province, claiming the organizers failed to ask City Hall for permission. The NGO Mother Nature has ...

The charges of “leading an insurrection” brought against seven CNRP lawmakers-elect after a violent protest last month now appear dead in the water, with their lawyers saying a Phnom Penh judge has told them he cannot question them over the case because they have sworn ...

 All fifty-five Members of Parliaments (MPs) from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) attended a parliamentary session for the first time on Friday after they had boycotted the parliament for 10 months following a disputed election results in July last year. CNRP’s president Sam Rainsy ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that he could not appoint his children in the cabinet posts even though they were qualified. “I have five children and five children-in-law. All of them have possessed degrees ranging from bachelor’s degrees to doctorate’s degrees, but I cannot ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng said that two points of the draft Constitution amendment sent by Sam Rainsy need to be discussed further. The two points are immunity and autonomous budget for National Election Committee (NEC). “We needed to discuss further over the request to grant immunity ...

The opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Wednesday sent a letter attaching with draft Constitution amendment to Interior Minister Sar Kheng. ...

A “shadow cabinet” will be created inside the National Assembly once the CNRP’s lawmakers-elect swear into office, senior opposition party officials said Thursday, in a move that nine years ago saw an opposition lawmaker imprisoned on charges of inciting a rebellion. Prime Minister Hun Sen and ...

A group of civil society organizations will petition King Norodom Sihamoni today, calling on the king to withhold his signature from three judicial laws that they say will entrench the ruling CPP’s control of the courts and jeopardize citizens’ constitutional freedoms. Despite concern raised by local ...

A glass-manufacturing tycoon on Saturday threatened to shoot dead two local journalists as they were covering a dispute he was having with another businessman in Phnom Penh, according to a report posted on the National Police website. The journalists, from Cambodia Express News and Bayon TV, ...

Mondolkiri Provincial Court charged a national police officer with intentional killing on Friday, the latest in an increasing trend of violent disputes over timber in the restive province. Pheng Sokheng, who was sent to the Seima Protected Forest to stifle the work of illegal loggers, on ...

Cambodia’s Constitutional Council has approved three controversial draft laws on judicial reform, despite heavy opposition from rights groups and international observers who say they will not restore the public’s faith in the courts. Critics say the laws—passed without opposition members in the National Assembly—put too much ...

More than a hundred monks and students from Vietnam’s Khmer Krom ethnic minority living in Cambodia clashed Tuesday with riot police and security guards in front of the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh as they marched to demand an apology for statements by ...

The Thai Public Health Ministry is looking into a report published in The Cambodia Daily about a Cambodian woman allegedly running an organ-transplant racket in which she reportedly persuades people to sell their kidney to patients in Thailand. Dr Thares Karasnairaviwong, deputy director general of the ...

The approval of King Norodom Sihamoni is all that is needed for three controversial judicial bills to be passed into law after they were declared constitutional this week by the CPP-stacked Constitutional Council of Cambodia (CCC). Despite an outcry from rights and legal advocacy groups over ...

Cambodia on Thursday rejected four recommendations for improving its human rights situation that it initially accepted earlier this year during its second universal periodic review at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. It also “noted” 38 recommendations—meaning it has not committed to implementing them—some relating ...

Detainees and prisoners continue to be administered electric shocks, beaten unconscious and even smothered by plastic bags, with 49 new allegations of torture or abuse at the hands of authorities this year, according to rights group Licadho, which says in a report released Wednesday that ...