Social development

Phnom Penh security forces on Sunday blocked activists from riding their bicycles around the city to promote their campaign against the pending construction of a hydropower dam in Koh Kong province, claiming the organizers failed to ask City Hall for permission. The NGO Mother Nature has ...

Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison has been buying truckloads of water for inmates since a road construction crew broke the water pipe leading to the jail last week, officials said Sunday. ...

The Ministry of Education announced that high school students who failed the national exam will get their second chance to pass the test on October 13 and 14 following a decision by Prime Minister Hun Sen to hold a re-sit of the exam amid reports ...

The start of the school year has been delayed for a month due to flooding that has affected many of the country’s schools this month, the Ministry of Education said Sunday. Ros Salin, spokesman and cabinet chief for the ministry, said that the school year will ...

About 300 disgruntled Cambodian workers and used-garment merchants last night ended their blockade on the border with Thailand. The workers had earlier parked their two-wheel carts in front of the Aranyaprathet-Poi Pet border checkpoint on the Poi Pet side of the Thai-Cambodian friendship bridge. They demanded ...

The families of three Cambodian workers killed after a six-storey condominium building collapsed at a construction site just north of Bangkok earlier this week have been paid compensation. ...

About 100 villagers who lost land to a sugarcane plantation, which was until recently financed by ANZ Royal Bank, traveled to Phnom Penh to protest in front of the bank’s headquarters Thursday, but failed to convince the bank to help them. Several hundred families in Kompong ...

The two top officials in what was first reported as a kidney-trafficking ring based out of a military hospital, then later dismissed as a “training program”, have returned to work, a doctor employed there said. Lieutenant General Ly Sovan, 54-year-old director of Preah Ket Mealea hospital, ...

Cambodia National Rescue Party president Sam Rainsy yesterday said that, contrary to his speech before the National Assembly last week, the Kingdom’s political crisis would not be resolved as long as opposition activists were still being harassed by the courts. If there are still CNRP members ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy met Thursday with Lor Peang villagers who suffered from land grabbing in Kampong Chhnang province. They have just arrived in Phnom Penh after a long distance walking from Kampong Chhang to demand justice over land dispute with KDC company, and have now ...

The UN Children’s Fund in Australia has warned volunteers and tourists to avoid visiting Cambodian orphanages following critical reports from the press in recent weeks. In a post on its website, UNICEF Australia said “these types of tours exploit children and their families for the financial ...

Recent flooding has claimed another victim, a child in Kratie province who drowned, bringing the total death toll to 30, Keo Vy, cabinet director at the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM), said yesterday. While water levels are declining across the 12 provinces affected by flooding, ...

A day after three of their community members were arrested following a violent encounter with police, about 50 villagers from Kompong Chhnang province forged ahead with a peaceful march toward Phnom Penh on Wednesday, but were temporarily blocked by police officials in Russei Keo district. The ...

Defense Minister Tea Banh on Wednesday denied that a kidney transplant training program at the Preah Ket Mealea military hospital is a secret, though he refused to provide details of the program, which police suspected earlier this week of being at the center of an ...

A Thai sugar company with major shares in Cambodian sugar cane is being investigated for human rights violations in operations along the border between the two countries. The National Human Rights Commission of Thailand recently investigated allegations that villagers were forced from their homes to make ...

The Minister of Education, Hang Choun Naron, has officially announced on Monday that the second exam for 12th graders who fail this year exam will take place either at the end of September or early October. The announcement came after the Minister was reported that ...

Some 500 ethnic minority Khmer Krom monks and activists concluded Wednesday their three-day protest against a Vietnamese diplomat, who reportedly said that South Vietnam, or former Kampuchea Krom provinces, belonged to Vietnam prior to France’s official transfer of the land in 1949. The protest ended without ...

About 3,000 garment workers in Kompong Chhnang province agreed to end their protest and return to work Wednesday after confusion over their monthly salaries was cleared away. Workers from the Chinese-owned Jiun Ye Garment factory in Samakki Meanchey district went on strike Monday after picking up ...

Unions representing garment workers have pledged to reignite protests if the minimum wage for the industry is raised to only $115 next year, a sum they say was offered by the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia during a meeting on Friday. The Labour Advisory Committee (LAC) ...

Military police in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district on Monday were duped into letting a detained immigration official walk free just hours after he was arrested for alleged involvement in the cross-border illegal timber trade, police said yesterday. District military police chief Sok Min said yesterday that ...

The Ministry of Defense’s account that an alleged kidney trafficking ring at its Preah Ket Mealea military hospital was in fact a fully legal training program in partnership with China’s Defense Ministry was met with questions and confusion Tuesday. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit has announced that three people, including a police officer, who were arrested last week in Svay Rieng province after posing as students taking the grade 12 national exam, have been charged with using false identities. In a statement released on Monday, the ACU ...

The U.N.’s human rights representative in Cambodia visited ethnic Bunong villagers in Mondolkiri province this week, days after local authorities prevented hundreds of them from marching to mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Wan-Hea Lee met with villagers in Pech Chreada district’s Bosra commune ...

Three men embroiled in a land dispute with a company owned by the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem were arrested Tuesday while marching with about 50 fellow villagers from Kompong Chhnang province’s Lor Peang village to Phnom Penh. The villagers planned to walk ...