Civil society

Piles of garbage festered on the streets of Phnom Penh on Tuesday as hundreds of workers employed by the city’s refuse collection company, Cintri, continued to strike for higher wages and better working conditions. At the company’s truck depot in Dangkao district Tuesday morning, more than ...

Meeting for a minimum wage workshop on Tuesday, the country’s independent and government-aligned unions argued over reforms to the Labor Advisory Committee (LAC), the body in charge of setting the minimum wage in the garment sector, which employs some 600,000 workers. The LAC, which is composed ...

Fewer cases of abuse of migrants were recorded last year than in 2012, but that doesn’t mean the issue is any less serious, a forum held by rights group Adhoc was told yesterday. Torture, a lack of food, and physical and sexual abuse are just some ...

Police in Kompong Chhnang province on Tuesday said they were looking for three suspects in the murder of a local journalist on Friday night and may soon add more names to the list, but still had no motive for the attack. However, the provincial coordinator for ...

Discussions about salaries on the factory floor led worker Channa, 22, to begin feeling jealous of her male counterparts. She learned, through talking with a number of co-workers, that the men working around her were doing the same amount of work as she was, but being ...

U.S. Ambassador William Todd on Tuesday used his weekly newspaper column to urge Cambodia’s government to immediately conduct reforms that would even the country’s economic playing field, curb corruption, restore democratic freedoms and generally address the concerns of citizens who want change. “Corruption and nepotism contribute ...

Riot police and security forces prevented an opposition delegation from meeting with 23 protest detainees in Kampong Cham province on Tuesday, for second day in a row. No violence was reported, as the delegation from the Cambodia National Rescue Party met with more than 100 police ...

International labour organisations Industrial Global Union, UNI Global Union and ITUC are seeking international support for a day of action in support of garment workers arrested during recent strikes in Cambodia. The groups are calling on people to demonstrate outside Cambodian embassies and deliver protest letters ...

In a new report highlighting abuse in Cambodia’s garment industry, Human Rights Watch has called on the Cambodian government to cease “intimidation and threats” against workers. The group interviewed nearly 200 factory workers from 55 different factories, and found that anti-union discrimination and poor workers conditions ...

The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The ...

Two years after Cambodia’s Acid Law took effect, and one year after a subsequent sub-decree further regulated the dangerous substance, significant hurdles remain in securing justice for victims of acid attacks, according to a paper published in the Cambodian Law and Policy Journalon Sunday. In her paper, ...

Though the Ministry of Information has repeatedly rejected independent radio station owner Mam Sonando’s requests to obtain a television station license and a radio relay station, saying that there was “no space” for him, the government has approved at least three new TV licenses and ...

At 10 a.m. on January 3, about 2,000 members of the security forces, mostly military police, advanced down Phnom Penh’s factory-lined Veng Sreng Street, spraying AK-47 assault rifle fire into a crowd of about 100 protesters who had been throwing stones and crude Molotov cocktails. ...

Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee, came under fire Monday from activists who accused him of lying to the U.N. in Geneva regarding land issues and the displacement of affected people. The criticism of Mr. Sambath’s report to the U.N.’s Human Rights ...

Opposition CNRP leader Sam Rainsy is to meet with Cambodian migrant workers during a two-day trip to South Korea later this week, at the end of a European tour that has included stops in Geneva, Brussels and Paris. “He will be visiting [South] Korea to meet ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has for the first time admitted to major flaws in its efforts to protect the roughly 4,000 families losing land to a $143 million project it is funding to rehabilitate Cambodia’s dilapidated railway system. On Friday, the ADB said it would ...

The U.N.’s General Assembly released its latest round of recommendations to improve the human rights situation in Cambodia on Thursday following a review held last week in Geneva. The statements made by delegations from 76 countries during the review urged Cambodia to fulfill its promise to ...

About 100 monks, activists and workers returned on Saturday evening to the Canadia Industrial Park, where garment workers clashed with military police on January 3, to pray for the five protesters who were shot dead in the violence and call for the release of 23 ...

Opposition party members will lead a delegation to the doors of Kampong Cham Correctional Centre 3 on Tuesday in the hope of visiting the 23 people imprisoned there following a violent crackdown on striking garment workers in early January. Despite having previously been denied access to ...

A call for the Cambodian government to lift its controversial ban on public assembly is among 34 such recommendations it has chosen to defer in the wake of last week’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights situation. The UN on Saturday released a ...

The opposition party’s planned complaint to the International Criminal Court against government officials for long-term rights abuses will likely be beaten to the punch by a US lawyer and rights activist, Voice of America reported on Friday. According to VOA, Morton Sklar, executive director of the ...

The opposition CNRP’s deputy public affairs director, Kem Monovithya, posted a statement to her official Facebook account on Saturday distancing the party from Thy Sovantha, a 19-year-old opposition activist with a large social media following, announcing that Ms. Sovantha was “not involved” with the CNRP. Last ...

As Buddhist monks across the country don saffron robes and leave pagodas in search of donations to fill alms bowls each morning, seven monks based in Dangkao district on the dusty outskirts of Phnom Penh are thinking only of feeding the country’s growing appetite for ...

Two human rights groups on Friday appealed to Interior Minister Sar Kheng to intervene after the General Department of Prisons, which is part of the Interior Ministry, refused to allow representatives from their organizations to meet with some of the 23 union activists and protesters ...