Legal framework

Cambodian and Thai military officials met yesterday morning to discuss the implementation of the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Preah Vihear, with both sides pledging to keep the peace and the Thais agreeing to withdraw to the new line of demarcation. Monday’s judgment declared that ...

The International Court of Justice yesterday unanimously declared that its 1962 judgment awarding the Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia also gave the Kingdom sovereignty over the promontory that the temple sits on. But while the announcement was initially greeted as a resounding victory by some in ...

Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology Lim Kean Hor said Monday that he would seek an investigation into a $1.5-million haul of river sand exported to India in April in spite of a ban on the export of dredged sand handed down by Prime Minister ...

Cambodia should have sovereignty over disputed land around the Preah Vihear temple on the border with Thailand, the UN’s highest court has ruled. The International Court of Justice in the Hague said Thailand must withdraw any soldiers from the area. Cambodia sought a clarification of the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on the Ministry of Information to accelerate the drafting of a long-awaited freedom of information law that could see more transparency in the Kingdom’s government. According to a press release issued by the Council of Ministers after a cabinet meeting ...

Laos is taking steps to convince neighboring countries of the merits of the planned Don Sahong hydropower project over Mekong River. Lao government officials organized a site visit on Sunday and Monday so that interested parties could see the site first-hand and get a sense of ...

Declaring that it has “zero tolerance” towards land grabbing, Coca-Cola has agreed to investigate a long running case in Cambodia where villagers are seeking court action against a company accused of seizing their land to make way for plantations linked to the supply of sugar ...

Government officials were still tight-lipped about the 2014 draft budget yesterday, though some details did continue to trickle out, such as the announcement of a sizeable increase in national defence spending. Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker and banking and finance committee member Cheam Yeap said yesterday that ...

A huge haul of river sand dredged in Cambodia has been quarantined at the southern Indian port city of Cochin since its arrival in April despite a ban on sand exports instituted by Prime Minister Hun Sen in 2009. India’s Deccan Chronicle news­paper reported on Tuesday ...

Road-safety advocates will likely continue banging their heads against the walls as police in Cambodia wait until early next year to enforce a new traffic law relating to helmets. fines under a yet-to-be passed law will charge drivers and passengers $3.75, about five times the previous ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on a directive last week to trans­fer 11 government bodies, previously overseen by Cabinet Minister Sok An, to relevant ministries and institutions, further cutting the expansive portfolio of the deputy prime minister in the wake of July’s national election. ...

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 ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Cambodia failed Monday to make its deadline to submit a key human rights report—known as the universal period review (UPR)—to the U.N., said Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee. Having missed the submission deadline, the government is now hoping to get its ...

Cambodia will submit a human rights report to the U.N. today for a universal periodic review (UPR), the second time it is participating in the process, according to the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit. Under the UPR process established in 2006, the Human ...

The government needs to do more to protect migrant workers, ensure that women have access to legal aid, bring cases of violence against women to court and draft an anti-discrimination law, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) said in a ...

Cambodia has signed an international treaty designed to regulate the trade in conventional weapons, becoming the 114th country to formally pledge its support for the agreement, which was adopted by the U.N.’s General Assembly in April. Sea Kosal, Cambodia’s ambassador to the U.N. in New York, ...

More than two decades after the Paris Peace Agreement, which was meant to open the way for peace and multiparty democracy in Cambodia, legal experts and hu­man rights advocates said Tuesday the government has largely abandoned the vision of the accord. Speaking at a conference on ...

More than 55,000 people have joined an online petition set up by a pair of French nongovernment groups urging the European Union (E.U.) to immediately launch an investigation into local sugar plantations accused of illegally evicting hundreds of Cambodian families. At the center of the dispute ...

The Phnom Penh municipal government will today issue announcements to two property developers ordering them to partially demolish buildings near the Royal Palace in order to reduce their height to comply with the original planning agreements, an official said. The two buildings—one owned by Vattanac Properties ...

Kneeling outside a motodop and car battery store on Monivong Boulevard in the capital, a 15-year-old boy spends his days piping acid into batteries with his bare hands. His employer says she has no idea that Cambodia, as well as having an Acid Control Law – ...

Hung Hiep (Cambodia) Co., the only company in Cambodia licensed to import Mercedes-Benz luxury vehicles, said Monday it would no longer make repairs to new lines of Mercedes vehicles that are smuggled into the country. Company officials said the move is to reduce scams and repair ...

Developing the Don Sahong dam on the Hou Sahong channel of the Mekong River in Champassak province does not breach the 1995 Mekong Agreement, a senior government official has told local media. Deputy Minister of Energy and Mines, Mr Viraphonh Viravong, made the comment on Thursday, ...

An increasing number of Cambodians have access to the Internet due to ownership of smartphones, tablets and the expansion of wireless broadband to rural areas of Cambodia, but access does not mean freedom from restrictions, according to a new report by New York-based Freedom House. In ...