Social development

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

The Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Kingdom of Cambodia has announced a new human case of H5N1 avian influenza, according to a ministry press release Wednesday. The case is a 6-year-old girl from Romdoul village, O Romdoul commune, Phnom Preuk district, Battambang province confirmed positive ...

Malaysia has not yet received a draft agreement aimed at protecting Cambodian migrant domestic workers from abuse, but the government is pressing Cambodia to lift its two-year moratorium on sending maids, a Malaysian official said Wednesday. In October 2011, Prime Minister Hun Sen imposed a ban ...

The death of a miner on Monday in a pit collapse in Preah Vihear is under investigation by Adhoc, the rights group has said. Lor Chann, Adhoc coordinator in Preah Vihear province, said yesterday that the miner died while working for a private mining firm in ...

Cambodia is making headway on its 2015 Millennium Development Goal to improve maternal health and is ahead of its target to reduce its under-five child mortality rate, but it still lags behind neighbouring countries, the 2013 State of the World Population Report has revealed. Released yesterday, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged convicted British pedophile Richard Fruin, 36, with sexually abusing two brothers, aged 8 and 11, at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, court officials said. While the court has yet to decide Fruin’s fate, his case—and many similar ...

Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district. Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, ...

More women should be part of any future high-level negotiations between the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP to resolve the current political deadlock, a coalition of women’s rights NGOs said Tuesday in a statement. In a joint statement by more than 20 organizations, the groups criticized ...

The International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) releases the first report from its mobile phone call-in project aimed at educating garment and footwear workers. The mobile phone project entitled Kamako Chhnoeum (‘Outstanding Worker’ in Khmer) received 3,245 valid phone calls in its first two ...

An Oddar Meanchey director of education is denying a complaint filed to the Ministry of Education alleging he took school supplies from a public school for use in a private school and pocketed salaries of teachers who no longer worked there. In a letter dated Monday, ...

DAMBE DISTRICT, Kompong Cham Province – Lying on makeshift stretchers, seated in cheap wheelchairs, blind people wearing dark glasses, children with twisted limbs and slack jaws—all sat on the dirt clasping smoking sticks of incense and muttering quiet prayers Tuesday, hoping to be healed. Among ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Cambodia failed Monday to make its deadline to submit a key human rights report—known as the universal period review (UPR)—to the U.N., said Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee. Having missed the submission deadline, the government is now hoping to get its ...

As the dispute over July’s national election enters its fourth month, a civil society umbrella organization, the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA), is due to release a comprehensive report on widespread irregularities recorded during the ballot. The report will be followed by the drafting of a proposed ...

Trade and tourism between Indonesia and Cambodia is growing but the two countries can still increase cooperation in those fields, according to participants in the 7th Indonesian Trade and Tourism Promotion exhibition on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich on Sunday. The sale of Indonesian pharmaceuticals, food products ...

A teacher at Tea Chamrath High School in Pursat town has accused school director Bou Sovannarith and deputy director Chhub Buntha of forcing students to pay bribes in the form of, among other things, enrolment fees for matriculation into the 2013-2014 academic year. Phat Malin, the ...

The Education Ministry on Monday said it was in line for a near 20 percent hike from the government’s $3.52 billion draft budget for 2014, approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cabinet on Friday, though other details of how money was to be allocated remained ...

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have evicted nearly 1,000 families in 14 provinces in the past five years, ostensibly to build military bases, according to a report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The report outlined Adhoc’s concerns over ongoing land disputes between local communities and ...

About 100 villagers in Preah Vihear province’s Rovieng district on Saturday turned out in protest for the second time this week to prevent a bulldozer that belongs to well-known businessman Try Pheap from clearing their land next to his rubber plantation, local officials and residents ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Sunday said that the CNRP would formally appeal to the CPP this week to resume negotiations to end the ongoing political deadlock, but said that the CPP would have to meet the CNRP’s conditions for a new round of talks. “Now ...

The government will today submit its second report to the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process that takes stock of human rights progress in each UN member state. Governments are required to report to the council every four and ...

Cambodia has made little progress on gender equality and is the lowest-ranked country in the region, according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2013 Gender Gap Index released Friday, slipping a place from last year to rank 104 out of 136 countries. The index examines the ...