Social development

Cambodia has reported 1,005 dengue fever cases in the first six months of 2014, down 83 percent from 6,039 cases in the same period last year, a health official said Friday. Char Meng Chuor, director of the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control, said ...

In August last year, the government launched a pilot project that sent 220 women to work as maids in Singapore, the first major effort to open up a new market for Cambodia’s domestic workers after the government halted sending maids to Malaysia due to persistent ...

A villager was arrested and authorities fired shots Thursday in an attempt to quell a protest against the pending eviction in Preah Vihear province of more than 80 families at the hands of timber magnate Try Pheap, villagers said. Lor Chan, provincial coordinator for rights ...

Naming and shaming factories that fail to ensure a basic standard of conditions for their workers is starting to improve standards in the crucial garment sector, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), but persistent offenders remain. Nine factories are included in the “lowest compliance” category ...

In response to a spate of Cambodian illegal loggers being shot dead by Thai soldiers near the border, the government on Tuesday urged a Thai delegation to consider border patrols composed of representatives from the two countries, the foreign minister said. “I would like to request ...

Officials involved in negotiating compensation offers between the developers of the Lower Sesan II dam and affected villagers have kept a portion of the money paid out to 12 families for themselves, according to an official. Duong Pov, Stung Treng provincial administration director, claimed that a ...

Six months ago today, security forces opened fire on garment workers protesting for a doubling of their minimum wage on Phnom Penh’s factory-lined Veng Sreng Boulevard. At least five people were killed in what rights groups called the worst state violence against citizens in 15 ...

Villagers caught in a land dispute with an agribusiness firm in Kompong Speu province Wednesday attempted to reclaim farmland they say is theirs, but were thwarted by provincial authorities, who appeased them by promising to measure the land again. About 250 families in Phnom Sruoch district ...

About 200 workers from the Chinese-owned Pollysa (Cambodia) Home Textile factory in Sihanoukville protested Wednesday against the overtime they were being forced to work and the firing of 20 employees earlier this week who refused the extra hours, workers and a union representative said. Starting at ...

The governor of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva district Wednesday ordered the private firm heading a $3-billion real estate project on the peninsula to temporarily stop pumping sand onto land being contested by about 40 local families, but urged the families to reconsider the compensation on ...

Experts will begin tests today on two barrels discovered in Mondulkiri province earlier this week, which are suspected to contain chemicals used by the US in the 1970s in its war against the Viet Cong, officials said yesterday. Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine ...

Foreign donors should push Cambodia’s government to end its human rights abuses as part of its bid to maintain political control of the nation, a rights group said Wednesday, after Phnom Penh allegedly snubbed recommendations by foreign governments to improve the country’s rights record. Representatives of ...

Villagers in Mondolkiri province have found a pair of rusty barrels believed to date back to the early 1970s and which officials suspect hold chemicals the U.S. used in its war against the Viet Cong to defoliate trees and eliminate cover. The officials said they did ...

A public forum will be held next month to find a solution to the Borei Keila housing crisis, city officials said yesterday. During a meeting with about 50 representatives of the community, Nhem Chanthary, deputy director of City Hall’s poor community development office, said Governor Pa ...

More than 100 ethnic minority activists trying to protect community forests have been arrested, jailed, threatened and subjected to violence so far this year, a major local rights group has said. In a statement released yesterday, Adhoc condemned the “discriminatory” treatment of indigenous people who have ...

Ethnic Bunong in Mondolkiri province’s Sen Monorom City said Tuesday that they would no longer cooperate with local officials in fighting illegal logging and that they would begin to confiscate loggers’ equipment and burn illicit timber themselves. At a press conference in Phnom Penh, representatives of ...

District security guards were deployed to Chroy Changva peninsula Tuesday to intercept villagers who were ready to smash a pipe that has been pumping sand onto their land for the past year. The roughly 40 families occupy the northeastern corner of a 387-hectare swathe of wetlands ...

Villagers who will be displaced if the controversial Lower Sesan II dam is built called on the developers yesterday to postpone construction for five years, allowing time for a comprehensive resettlement scheme to be devised. But a government official dismissed their request as “beyond the pale”, ...

Security guards working for a firm building a resort in Koh Kong province beat a woman who was trying to farm the land from which she had been evicted, she has told police. Khun Phall, 40, said that on Monday evening, she and family members returned ...

The Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF) has said its decision to cut off funding to Agir Pour Les Femmes en Situation Precaire (Afesip) came partly because of the continued involvement of embattled anti-human-trafficking activist Somaly Mam in the local NGO. In a statement on Monday, the SMF ...

The Siem Reap provincial department of education, youth and sports overruled a decision by the director of the provincial teachers training center to ban two outspoken teachers-in-training from their upcoming final exam after a successful protest by about 250 of their peers Tuesday. Vin Savy, 21, ...

Cambodia and China are drafting a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to stamp out the exploitative trade of Cambodian women to China, where there have been increasing reports of women being abused by their Chinese husbands and sold into the sex trade. The diplomatic push comes in ...

Mondolkiri provincial villagers on Tuesday accused authorities there of colluding with a development company involved in serious deforestation. The Phnong minority villagers say the wife of the deputy provincial governor owns the company, Villas Development, which is allegedly involved in illegal logging. The activists spoke Tuesday ...

Despite a number of agencies dispatched to solve land dispute, rights workers say people continue to face forced evictions and rights abuses by land developments. These problems are not being handled at the local level, fueling mistrust in local government, rights workers say. Rights workers from myriad ...