Child labor

Prime Minister Hun Manet and many government ministries celebrated this year’s June 12 World Day Against Child Labour, held under the theme “Let’s act on our commitments: End Child Labour!” ...

Child labor and debt bondage continue in Cambodia’s brick factories, according to a report published Monday by the human rights group Licadho. The organization also found garment waste from international brands such as Reebok, Old Navy and Adidas fueling kilns in brick factories. ...

The Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training is intensifying its efforts to disseminate labour laws and legal documents related to child employment across Cambodia, with an emphasis on five provinces. ...

UNICEF and the NGO Save the Children jointly hosted a forum in Phnom Penh marking the 10th anniversary of the global launch of the “Children’s Rights and Business Principles”. These principles offer guidelines for businesses as they embed children’s rights into their business strategies and ...

Cambodia has launched a campaign to end child labor in the brick industry by 2020, a move industry observers cautiously welcome while expressing doubts the goal will be achieved, and calling for more structural changes. ...

A senior official of the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training said on Wednesday that around 30,000 Cambodian children had been rescued from the most serious forms of hard labour in the Kingdom over the past five years. A further 180,000 had been prevented from ...

The Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training has urged all relevant departments to use the Criminal Code to prosecute brick kiln owners who use child labour. And the owner of a Kandal facility at which a young girl lost her arm will be among the ...

The Ministry of Labour says it will investigate the claims of a Royal Holloway, University of London research team’s report alleging modern slavery in Cambodia’s brick kilns, said Minister of Labour Ith Sam Heng. The report entitled Blood Bricks: Untold Stories of Modern Slavery and ...

Cambodia’s construction boom has pushed thousands of families into modern slavery in the brick industry through debt bondage, a report by researchers from London’s Royal Holloway University say. The blood bricks report was released on Tuesday following the sharp rise in Cambodian brick prices in ...

The Labour Ministry has reminded business owners not to employ minors, while also noting that it has not come across any cases of child labour so far this year. Labour Minister Ith Samheng on Friday said employers must respect and follow labour laws and directives ...

ANZ Bank failed to meet its own human rights standards when it financed a Cambodian sugar plantation that was linked to forced evictions, child labour and workplace deaths, according to an Australian government investigation. ...

As International Children’s Day and the World Day Against Child Labour draw near, Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on ministries, institutions and local authorities to prevent violations of children’s rights and to take action to protect children from all forms of violence while promoting ...

The permanent vice chair of the National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) delivered a progress report on efforts to eradicate child labour in the Kingdom on Tuesday, saying that factories are being investigated, and some shut down, for employing children illegally. ...

The Alliance for Conflict Transformation on Saturday published a report into the challenges faced by children working on the streets of Phnom Penh, many of whom are unable to attend school and suffer multiple health problems. ...

The National Committee for Counter Trafficking’s (NCCT) six-month report, released on Monday, identified two cases of child labour in brick-making factories in Siem Reap, though officials and a rights group monitor said the use of such labour had decreased in the province. ...

Labor Minister Ith Sam Heng yesterday called on officials to take stricter action in preventing child labor and asked civil society organizations to help monitor and report abuses immediately, but without doing so publicly.The call was made during a ceremony at the Labor Ministry to ...

The Labor Ministry says that it is investigating fresh allegations of widespread child labor at the country’s brick-making factories, but claims to have found no evidence as of yet. The ministry made the announcement on Friday, hours after the release of a new report by local ...

Cambodia’s dependence on illegal child labor, despite its small population, is endemic compared to neighboring countries, according to Veng Heang, director of the Child Labor Department at the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training. ...

The persistence of dangerous and demeaning forms of work remains a major challenge for the Kingdom’s development, according to the UN’s annual Human Development Report (HDR) launched yesterday by the United Nations Development Programme.Dubbed “Work for Human Development”, the 2015 report finds the Asia-Pacific region home ...

While Cambodia marginally stepped up efforts to combat child labour in 2014, a lack of resources and corruption remain massive impediments to the fight, according to a report released by the United States Department of Labor last week. It attributed those improvements largely to beefed-up ...

A couple arrested for renting 22 children from their parents and forcing them to sell fruit on Phnom Penh’s streets and beer gardens were charged on Friday by the municipal court, police said. ...

Eight young girls were placed in the care of the Social Affairs Ministry on Thursday after Thai authorities found them begging and selling flowers in Thailand and sent them back to Cambodia, according to the ministry. ...

On the southern outskirts of Cambodia’s capital, a ramshackle factory turns out tens of thousands of bricks each month. Pale rows of freshly fired bricks wait for buyers under the corrugated iron roof, while a 50-meter-long oven leaks a dull heat as it bakes a ...

The labor minister said Tuesday there were so few underage workers in the garment industry that “we can count them on our fingers,” but a unionist and an NGO countered that child labor was still rife in the country’s smaller garment factories. ...