Social development

Rights group Licadho has welcomed an announcement from the Interior Ministry that conditions at prisons, social rehabilitation centers and drug rehabs will be improved to ensure that the rights of inmates, patients and others housed or confined at the centers will be respected. ...

The Constitutional Council will meet with a group of opposition lawmakers on Wednesday over a controversial draft law to regulate NGOs, as it prepares to review the bill and send it to the king to be signed into law. ...

Cambodia’s National Election Committee (NEC) will make the disabled a top priority in political participation and include related policy in the country’s new election law to ensure them equality in the next nationwide elections, an agency official said. ...

Cambodia has failed to meet a number of UN Millennium Development Goals, which were set out years ago and aimed at halving global poverty. Ros Sopheap, executive director for Gender and Development for Cambodia, said gender equality and the empowerment of women have not been ...

Police in Battambang have released a man who grew more than 200 marijuana plants in the jungle for “personal use” after he promised not to do it again. ...

With the Grade 12 national high school exam about two weeks away, a group of five NGOs sent a letter to the Ministry of Education on Monday asking the government to prevent guesthouses from hiking their prices for students who have to stay overnight in ...

About 200 people gathered in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district on Sunday demanding the release of two women who were arrested last week for allegedly chaining up their 13-year-old niece and selling her for sex. ...

The relatives and neighbors of two sisters who were arrested in Phnom Penh last week over the alleged sexual enslavement of their 13-year-old niece are angry. Members of the mostly Cham Muslim community living along the Tonle Sap river in Russei Keo district’s Chraing Chamreh ...

The sidewalk near Wat Phnom resembles the line outside a popular amusement park. Toy sellers walk by hawking plastic helicopters and rattles, as a line of more than a hundred parents and children sit and wait for the gates to open, cooling themselves with plastic ...

Almost half of Cambodia’s youth named future employment as their biggest worry, a new study by a local coalition of youth groups shows.Asked about their major worry in life, 49 percent of respondents aged between 15 and 35 said that not being able to find ...

Despite differing political situations, citizens of Myanmar and Cambodia face many of the same issues and can learn from each other, activists from the two countries told a conference here on Saturday. ...

Fear of social reprisal may be causing Phnom Penh’s sex workers to seek abortions in the privacy of unregistered private clinics or at home. ...

Unemployment is the top worry for Cambodian youth, according to a survey released on Friday.Almost half – 49 per cent – of 630 people surveyed across the country cited unemployment as their main concern in the survey conducted by the Youth Committee for Unity and ...

A United Nations agency will soon begin holding public meetings nationwide to consult the public on a long-awaited law that would give Cambodians access to important information held by the government. ...

Around a thousand people from Cambodian government institutions, experts and aid workers as well as community members gathered Sunday to shine a light on a variety of issues faced by the country’s indigenous peoples — including access to modern health care. ...

The Constitutional Council of Cambodia will meet on Wednesday to decide on the legality of a controversial draft NGO law that was passed by the National Assembly and Senate last month, according to the council’s spokesman. ...

The Constitutional Council will next week will hear arguments from the government and opposition about the controversial NGO law before deciding on Wednesday whether to send the legislation to King Norodom Sihamoni for final approval. ...

The Constitutional Council of Cambodia (CCC) held a meeting today on the “constitutionality” of a newly-approved law on the Association and Non-governmental Organization. ...

Press freedom groups have condemned a violent attack on two reporters by security guards at a rally in Phnom Penh yesterday. ...

King Norodom Sihamoni, Queen Mother Norodom Monineath and Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday presided over the inauguration of Cambodia’s first geriatric center at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh. ...

The first meeting to discuss a long-term strategy for dealing with last year’s freak outbreak of HIV in Battambang province’s Roka commune was held at the Council of Ministers building in Phnom Penh on Thursday, officials said. ...

Disabled people in Cambodia may frequently be excluded from the election process, according to a new study that is to be released next week that indicates local authorities consistently refuse to issue identity cards to the physically and developmentally disabled. ...

A local journalist told court and police officials in Siem Reap City this week that he received a phone call on Monday from a man who threatened to cut his throat in retaliation for an article he wrote about a group of alleged drug dealers, ...

Foreign funding for HIV/AIDs programs took a sharp dive last year, as a lower rate of HIV infection among the general population led donors to declare victory over the disease. But the disease remains a threat, experts say. ...