Social development

One of five villagers arrested in a land dispute with politically connected company KDC International told the Post after their release on Friday that he would keep protesting “until our community obtains a resolution from the government”. ...

Koh Kong Governor Bun Leart has promised villagers evicted from their land by Chinese-owned Union Development Group that he will give their petition to Minister of Environment Say Sam Al today. ...

On the Sesan and Srepok rivers in the northeast, boats of all shapes and sizes lug timber back and forth between the banks. Men wait on craggy land alongside the water with jerry-rigged winches and homemade vehicles to drag precious cargo up steep inclines. Fallen ...

The UN and human rights groups called on the government Friday to honor its obligations as a party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and thoroughly investigate the disappearance of 16-year-old Khem Sopath, who was last seen lying ...

Workers at the center of a land dispute between villagers in Kompong Chhnang province and a company owned by the wife of the mines and energy minister on Thursday pressed forward with a campaign against the release of five villagers who were imprisoned over violence ...

Local rights group Adhoc on Thursday called on Prime Minister Hun Sen and other government officials to hold regular meetings with NGOs in order to better understand the human rights situation in the country. ...

British conservation group Fauna & Flora International says it has captured the first image of a yellow-bellied weasel in Cambodia under a joint initiative with Oxford University. In a statement released Wednesday, the group said researchers led by FFI field biologist Channa Phan were conducting a ...

Researchers in Colombia have conducted a promising randomised trial of a vaccine for the dengue virus, a disease that affects thousands of Cambodians every year, according to results published in the September issue of The Lancet. ...

Over the past year, Phnom Penh officials have proven themselves to be an unyielding group in the face of dissent, and the helmeted, baton-wielding security guards who answer to them the scourge of protesters. On Wednesday, however, Daun Penh district officials took a softer approach when ...

Anti-corruption czar Om Yentieng on Wednesday applauded high school teachers for overseeing the nation’s cleanest-ever national exam earlier this month, but warned that jail time awaited anyone who is found to be corrupt at the second round of exams in October. ...

Ny Chakriya, senior official from human rights group ADHOC, said that freedom of assembly is hostage in hand of politicians. When they get along well with each other, the freedom of expression and assembly is widely opened. Chakriya said Thursday during a ceremony held to announce ...

Kem Sokha, newly-elected first vice president of the National Assembly, led a session of the National Assembly Wednesday for the first time after president Heng Samrin went out to have a meeting the outgoing Thai Ambassador to Cambodia for a short period of time. ...

Australia’s plan to resettle refugees in Cambodia may be a win-win opportunity for the two countries but is also short-sighted, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. In a commentary posted Tuesday, the center’s Asian program said Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was ...

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to intensify self-regulatory efforts against corrupt practices to help foster a stronger business environment, NGO Transparency International (TI) Cambodia said yesterday. At a seminar in Phnom Penh, TI Cambodia executive director Preap Kol told business representatives that while government corruption ...

Representatives of villagers in Kratie province locked in a land dispute with an agribusiness firm said discussions with land management and provincial officials at the Snuol district hall ended Tuesday without a resolution. ...

Amid a lawsuit and a chorus of dissent, developers of the first lower Mekong mainstream hydropower project, the massive Xayaburi dam, have quietly submitted a long-anticipated, multimillion-dollar redesign plan, the Post has learned. What exactly has been changed about the 1,260-megawatt dam, which environmentalists contend will ...

Cambodia must significantly increase teachers’ salaries and import the best teacher trainers from abroad in order to combat a continuously widening gap between the skills employers are looking for and those the country’s graduates are able to provide, a new report says. Facing the worst student-teacher ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court questioned four villager representatives Tuesday over alleged violence and property damage in an ongoing land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat’s Koh Kong Special Economic Zone company. ...

Resolution continued to elude 17 former bus drivers for the Phnom Penh Sorya Transportation Company yesterday when a demonstration at the company’s headquarters was roughly dispersed by company security after the ex-staffers tried to block buses from leaving. Sambath Vorn, president of the union whose founding ...

Sok Hieng* is concerned about a government census of foreigners that some observers believe will focus primarily on those of Vietnamese descent. “I am afraid that I will be forced to leave Cambodia because I do not have ID yet,” said Hieng, a 33-year-old construction worker ...

An international agriculture NGO is preparing to roll out a nationwide project in partnership with computer-chip maker Intel whereby more than 25,000 farmers will be able to receive real-time advice on farming methods via a smartphone app. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) piloted the ...

A group of Kompong Chhnang villagers in a fight for land with the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem delivered petitions to the Ministry of Justice and National Assembly on Monday, one of five communities from across the country that have recently traveled ...

Even within the country’s notoriously overcrowded prison system, inmates in this northern province live in particularly harsh conditions. Approximately 120 prisoners, including 16 women and three children, are held in four cells in the Oddar Meanchey provincial police headquarters. “In one cell we keep 20 or more ...

After the development company 7NG completed the violent eviction of more than 1,400 families from Phnom Penh’s Dey Krahorm community in 2009, it set its sights on the adjacent White Building. The historic apartment block, which was built as a low-cost housing project under then Prince ...