Social development

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Surya Subedi, will visit the country next week to assess the government’s progress in improving human rights and democratic and land reforms, his office said Wednesday. During the 10-day fact-finding mission, beginning June ...

Thai authorities have sent 7, 507 illegal Cambodian migrant workers back to Cambodia since the start of this month, a Cambodian spokesman said Wednesday. ...

The Confucius Institute of the Royal Academy of Cambodia on Wednesday hosted the 7th Chinese Bridge Chinese proficiency competition for Cambodian secondary students. Fourteen Cambodian candidates, who had been shortlisted from dozens of students, were contested in the final stage on Wednesday. Each contestant was given three ...

The Phnom Penh municipality on Tuesday began its latest campaign to clear the city’s streets of vagrants, rounding up truckloads of beggars and sellers at traffic lights and holding them at district offices and the municipal social affairs department. Street people across the city were seen ...

The minister of mines and energy on Monday said a new private-public working group will study the impacts of a proposed hydropower dam in Koh Kong opposed by hundreds of resident ethnic minority families and find them an adequate resettlement site. A Cambodian consultancy, SBK Research ...

Protesting workers at Ocean Garment factory say they are worried the manufacturer, which has suspended operations for one month, will close altogether. About 20 per cent of Ocean’s 1,300 workers demanding full payment during the break have found work elsewhere, while longtime employees are literally praying ...

A private clinic aiming to provide medical care to factory workers in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (SEZ) will open this month, the health centre’s managing director said yesterday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen may regularly deliver hours of bombastic public oratory and rarely, if ever, allow anyone to ask questions of him. But his youngest son, Hun Many, a rising star in the ruling CPP, has begun doing just the opposite as he builds on ...

U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Jeff Daigle visited In Komar Primary School in Kampong Thom province today to highlight a $20 million U.S. government school feeding program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and implemented by the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), ...

Phnom Penh recently saw the destruction of a portion of the Buddhist Institute to make way for the expansion of a casino. Political analyst Lao Mong Hay told “Hello VOA” last week that this kind of development demonstrates an “imbalance” between public and private institutions. The ...

A journalist who filed a complaint with the Pursat Provincial Court alleging that a soldier threatened to kill him over an illegal logging report withdrew his complaint after the soldier was internally disciplined, court officials and military police said Monday. Sak Rom, a reporter with Kapit ...

Union representatives stormed out of negotiations and continued a strike yesterday when managers at T&K Garment factory said workers would never receive the 2,000 riel ($0.50) daily lunch allowance allegedly promised to them. A week after they walked off the job, T&K workers at Por Sen ...

The opposition yesterday accused a senior army general of having ordered plainclothes soldiers to block the party from entering the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng on Sunday, where they were set to hold a public forum. But Defence Minister Tea Banh strongly rejected the ...

About 30 residents from Phnom Penh’s Srah Chak commune protested in front of their Russian Boulevard houses Monday, demanding that City Hall issue them land titles. Some of the protesters wore CPP T-shirts while others held banners with pictures of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ...

ANZ Royal Bank and local microfinance institution Hattha Kaksekar Limited (HKL) on Monday entered into the first partnership of its kind in Cambodia in a bid to bring together clients from either side of the financial spectrum. Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding at ...

Phnom Penh municipality on Monday ordered a curb on vagrants entering the city and a roundup of beggars, homeless people and children selling items at traffic lights. In the directive, signed by deputy city governor Seng Ratanak, City Hall orders the 12 district governors, its social ...

Tuesday morning, not long after dawn, a line of students formed outside En Komar Primary School, in Kampong Thom province. Students were waiting to receive breakfast from their teachers. The breakfasts are part of a World Food Program initiative that aims to feed 3.5 million students ...

Kompong Chhnang provincial authorities allegedly locked villagers out of the provincial hall after dozens came to deliver a complaint against the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, before locking out a newly appointed councilor who left the building to talk with them. The villagers ...

Representatives for the 200 Cambodian families suing U.K. sugar firm Tate & Lyle for allegedly profiting off of their stolen land say they have rejected the firm’s latest offer to settle the dispute and are looking forward to their first court date, set for October. The ...

Council of Ministers secretary of state Keo Remy wants to see female police officers controlling female protesters at future demonstrations, he said at a press conference on Friday. Mr. Remy said female protesters have adopted a new “style” of demonstration under the direction of NGOs who ...

The number of families who have registered for space on a social land concession intended for farmers evicted from land in Kratie province—who held a series of protests last month in Phnom Penh—has more than doubled, with hundreds of newcomers registering, according to a deputy ...

Amid complaints from union and labour rights officials of illegal firings over the years, Cambodia’s garment factory association is holding a course on the termination process in Preah Sihanouk province today. ...

The number of inmates who died in the country’s prisons in the first quarter of the year dipped to nine from 15 during the same period last year, a rights group and the prison department said. From January to April, nine prisoners—five men and four women—reportedly ...

A union activist detained in Svay Rieng province on Sunday for delivering fliers promoting a stay-at-home strike was released after three hours, but police kept the leaflets, he said yesterday. When Kem Chamroeun, 25, of the Collective Union of Movement of Workers (CUMW) brought a stack ...