Social development

Compared to their peers in the region, Cambodian children are much more likely to die by drowning, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization. The WHO, which provided country-specific statistics alongside its new Global Report on Drowning, released yesterday, estimates that the risk of ...

More than 155,000 people in Cambodia are living as modern “slaves”, according to a global index released this week. The Global Slavery Index 2014, released on Monday by Australia-based NGO Walk Free Foundation (WFF), ranks Cambodia 14th out of 167 countries for the prevalence of slavery, ...

Hundreds of people gathered yesterday morning in front of Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison to demand the release of 17 incarcerated activists, monks and opposition members. The detainees include 10 land activists, three monks and four members of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. Fifteen of ...

Cambodia and Australia have reiterated their commitment to comply with a refugee deal signed in September despite criticism from human rights groups and opposition parties in both countries, Xinhua news agency reported. ...

Local rights workers say they fear ongoing protests by the Khmer Krom minority in front of the Vietnamese Embassy could be putting demonstrators at risk of a blacklisting. ...

Villagers faced with losing their homes to the planned expansion of the Phnom Penh International Airport used a tried-and-tested method yesterday of attracting attention to their plight, sending their second “SOS” in two years. In November 2012, families who had been told their homes would be ...

When Phnom Penh was flooded with free condoms during the Water Festival last week—a public health push to ensure revelers who came for days of debauchery did so safely—the city’s condom vendors weren’t happy about it. The global health organization Population Services International (PSI), whose ...

The Cambodian government is carrying out a new wave of arrests of opposition party and social activists. Cambodia’s donors should speak out against the government’s harassment, arbitrary detention, and summary trials of peaceful protesters and the government should end the crackdown. The crackdown has ...

Civil society groups have condemned the arrest, detention and conviction of seven Boeung Kok land activists, following their protests earlier this week outside Phnom Penh City Hall. Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday charged them with the violation of traffic law by blocking a public ...

Cambodia has again ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world with the release of global anti-bribery association TRACE’s bribery risk index. According to the index, titled the TRACE Matrix and released on November 11, Cambodia is the fifth most at risk country ...

A Cambodian court on Tuesday sentenced seven female land rights activists, including a 75-year-old woman, to one year in prison each for blocking traffic during a protest. Judge Mong Mony Sophea of Phnom Penh Municipal Court ruled the women were guilty of “creating a public ...

Like many developing countries, Cambodia’s mainly agricultural society is changing fast, driven by urbanization and falling fertility rates. As young workers move to the cities, older people are staying back in the villages, where they have little support. Although former civil servants and soldiers get ...

Representatives of Oddar Meanchey villagers who allegedly lost their homes in a 2008 land grab by Thai-owned sugar giant Mitr Phol are hopeful a settlement may soon be reached after they testify before Thai human rights officials today. Witnesses representing more than 400 families are slated ...

46 people were killed, and 197 others were injured in road accidents from 4-8 November 2014, up from 29 killed and 117 injured over the same period last year, according to a report of General Commissariat of National Police on Monday. ...

With agriculture still the mainstay of its economy, Cambodia is seeking to reform rural communities in partnership with Korea to shore up residents’ livelihoods and boost grain exports. The Southeast Asian country is seeking to follow in the footsteps of the “Saemaeul Undong,” or New Community ...

A campaign organised by Cambodians has led the country’s first vice-president of the National Assembly to urge Australia to back down from its bid to resettle refugees there. Kem Sokha said in a letter to the Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, Alison Burrows, that the deal to ...

The National Assembly’s anti-corruption commission submitted a letter to the Phnom Penh Municipal Hall last week requesting an update on the resolution of the long-running dispute between evicted Borei Keila villagers and development firm Phan Imex. ...

As about 60 percent of the tens of thousands of students who took the national high school exam—some twice—this year cope with failure, Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said this week the dismal grades would only have a “minor impact” on university admissions and jobseekers. ...

A group of activist monks say they will force CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun to apologize for a heated discussion he had with a monk on Monday if he tries to enter one of their pagodas in the future. ...

Two outspoken critics of Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen are to be dragged to court this month on vague charges of “incitement to commit a crime,” but the defendants say they have done nothing illegal. Prominent activist monk Luon Sovath received a summons dated Oct. 22 ...

Police arrested a woman on suspicion of human trafficking in Tbong Khmum province’s Suong City on Monday, after the woman was found with a teenage girl whose parents had raised the alarm with local authorities once she went missing in Ratanakkiri province, officials said Tuesday. ...

As the new public school year gets under way this week, grade 12 students reeling from en masse failure at the national exam have a choice to make: repeat their grade or forfeit their diploma. In total, just 33,997 test-sitters, or 40.6 per cent of ...

Two Vietnamese women were sentenced yesterday by Phnom Penh Municipal Court to two-and-a-half years in prison each for trafficking five Vietnamese women to have sex with wealthy men in a hotel. ...

The head of the country’s anti-graft body has said he has received two death threats since the unit responsible for directing investigations into public and private-sector corruption was established in 2010. ...