Civil society

A 7-month-old baby, a woman and two men en route to Malaysia were rescued from two alleged traffickers near the Cambodia-Thai border in Banteay Meanchey’s Poipet town, police said yesterday. Heng Chhun, 48, and Som Na, 38, will face charges related to human trafficking, Prum Sonthor, ...

Seeing is believing—particularly in a country where the government controls the broadcast media and current affairs news, aired on pro-ruling par­ty TV and radio, is of­ten at odds with the country’s few independent media outlets. But in the aftermath of a violent clash between striking garment ...

Transparency watchdogs have warned that $1.5 billion of unallocated funds in next year’s budget will only encourage nepotism and embezzlement. The Draft Budget Law was approved at the National Assembly on Tuesday in a unanimous vote of 66 ruling Cambodian People’s Party MPs. The $3.4 billion ...

Laos is pushing ahead with construction of a second dam on the Mekong River despite objections from environmental and civil society groups. Work on the main part of the Don Sahong hydropower dam near the Cambodian border in southern Laos will begin by the end of ...

The government affirmed its commitment to bilingual education for ethnic minority children in Cambodia’s northern provinces at a UNESCO conference in Bangkok last week. Speaking at the fourth International Conference on Language and Education: Multilingual Education for all in Asia and the Pacific, Ton Sa Im, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Environmentalists and NGOs are threatening to sue developers of a controversial hydropower dam, claiming the project would cause irreversible damage to the Mekong River. The Don Sahong dam, a 260-megawatt project proposed on a site less than two kilometres north of the Cambodian-Lao border, is expected ...

CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun on Wednesday lauded the economic and social benefits of the widespread clearing of Cambodia’s forests for development projects. Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly after a meeting with the Vietnamese Ambassador Ngo Anh Dzung, Mr. Vun, who is also the spokesman ...

A senior US State Department official visiting the kingdom said yesterday that any solution to the current political deadlock would have to come from within Cambodia and not from foreign powers. Scot Marciel, principle deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, ...

Some 50 representatives of Phnom Penh’s embattled Boeng Kak community on Monday marched to the offices of the European Union and World Bank to request that the international bodies send observers to the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of anti-eviction activist Yorm Bopha on November 22. Ms. ...

A Cambodian court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former politician who shot and wounded three garment workers in 2012 but has yet to serve any time behind bars in a case that has prompted outrage from rights groups. Judge Taing Sun Lay also ...

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

The death of a miner on Monday in a pit collapse in Preah Vihear is under investigation by Adhoc, the rights group has said. Lor Chann, Adhoc coordinator in Preah Vihear province, said yesterday that the miner died while working for a private mining firm in ...

Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district. Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, ...

More women should be part of any future high-level negotiations between the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP to resolve the current political deadlock, a coalition of women’s rights NGOs said Tuesday in a statement. In a joint statement by more than 20 organizations, the groups criticized ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

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 ...

As the dispute over July’s national election enters its fourth month, a civil society umbrella organization, the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA), is due to release a comprehensive report on widespread irregularities recorded during the ballot. The report will be followed by the drafting of a proposed ...

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 ...

More than 100 people on Thursday protested and stopped a bulldozer belonging to businessman Try Pheap from clearing their land next to a rubber plantation he owns in Preah Vihear’s Rovieng district, villagers and local officials said. Oeun Sitha said he was among more than 100 ...

The owner of the popular local ABC radio station on Thursday urged university students to call his station and inform listeners if their teachers discuss information that could be deemed critical of the government. An ABC radio employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity as ...

As the flood levels recede in most of the 20 affected provinces, victims continue facing scores of recovery challenges including sanitation, food security, health and shelter concerns, as well as a lack of potable water. In its fourth report on the flood situation, released yesterday, the ...

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 ...