Social development

Prime Minister Hun Sen again addressed recent criticism from [Surya Subedi] the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia , during a speech yesterday in Bateay Meanchey province that focused on land disputes. Mr. Hun Sen was speaking in Thma Puok district’s Banteay Chhmar commune, where he ...

Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...

The Ministry of Labor on Sunday launched an educational campaign aimed at preventing further mass faintings in garment factories, a ministry official said yesterday. Meng Hong, director of the ministry’s inspection and legal affairs department, said that the campaign would target more than 30,000 garment workers ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday questioned one of three human rights workers charged-alongside a journalist-with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest violently against a powerful agro-industry firm during a 2009 land dispute. A representative of the villagers said yesterday that about 500 of them are planning to gather ...

Education garment workers and their bosses on how to avoiding fainting is the latest strategy the Ministry of Labor is using to address a problem that has plagued the industry in the past two years, a ministry official said yesterday. Labor Ministry Secretary of State Oum Mean said he ...

Thirty families uprooted by Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project have filed a complaint with Australia’s highest human rights body, alleging rights abuses as a result of the partially AusAid-funded rail project. The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission was made on behalf of the families by NGOs Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive ...

Hundreds of families from more than a dozen communities joined local human rights groups yesterday as they rallied outside the National Assembly for World Habitat Day, calling for an end to forced land evictions in Phnom Penh. Among those protesting were residents from the Boeng ...

Gender inequality in education is still palpable in Cambodia, causing women to be undervalued in the workplace and their potential to be untapped, the Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs said during the celebration of the United Nations International Day of the ...

A week after Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he would be cancelling an unknown number of economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest, activists called for details on the annulled concessions, saying such revocations would be meaningless unless they could be policed. On September ...

UN Human Rights Envoy to Cambodia Prof Surya Subedi has taken a strong exception to the scathing criticism of him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, saying it was unbecoming of a person of the prime minister´s stature to “descend to the personal level”. In a ...

Officials from the government  U.N. and human rights groups on Friday put forward amendments to draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) that is designed to impose safeguards for Cambodians to travel to work as maids in Malaysia. While the original draft by the Malaysian government sets out the responsibility of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday appeared to add his voice to the strong government reaction against criticism from U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi. Mr. Subedi last month delivered reports on human rights and economic land concessions in Cambodia to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. His ...

A motodop at the center of the high-profile case against imprisoned Boeung Kak lake villager Yorm Bopha has returned to work after receiving treatment for head injuries, he said yesterday. Supporters of Nget Chet, 28, said during demonstrations last month that the motodop had been nearly brain damaged during an ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen lashed out at the UN’s human rights envoy to Cambodia yesterday, saying Surya Subedi’s latest report skewed too heavily toward the opposition and suggested his talents might be better employed elsewhere.   While the premier never mentioned the Nepalese national and Leeds ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court will appoint a new judge to process complaints filed by ethnic Jarai minority villagers against a firm owned by Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, regarding a land dispute that has now dragged on for more than five ...

Land governance policies in Asia, especially concessions made to private companies, are leaving the region’s poorest vulnerable to human rights abuses, experts say. “Land-grabbing by the rich and powerful continues,” Suson Bunsak, executive secretary of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, said at the recent Asia ...

Hundreds of families living near Phnom Penh International Airport are facing imminent eviction from heir homes as security preparations begin for world leaders who will attend next month’s Asean and East Asia summits. A total of 387 families living on 6.3 hectares of land to the ...

Students finishing their secondary education this year are carefully looking at market demand to decide what to study to ensure solid future earnings. Many educators say the recent growth of the construction sector in Cambodia is encouraging parents and students to enroll at the universities of ...

Protester’s from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities demonstrated outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday by employing a new tactic: locking themselves up inside a cage. With about 100 people in attendance, two protesters crouched inside a small cage to protest against the detention ...

When the international community hammered out a hard-fought deal with the government in 2001 for a war crimes tribunal to try the most senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, they hoped their efforts would also set an example for local court system riddled with ...

The country’s foremost campaigning monk, Loun Sovath, received the Martin Ennals Award in Geneva on Tuesday for his efforts to document the plight of people fighting against eviction in Cambodia. The award, which honors one human rights defender each year, is valued at $21,300, a purse ...

Activist monk Luon Sovath has been named the recipient of this year’s Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders for his work promoting villagers’ land claims and publicising rights abuses. A familiar figure at protests in Cambodia, including the widely decried May trial of the Boeung Kak 13, ...

Despite the government embarking on a nationwide land-titling program, there is still little space for communities affected by economic land concessions to voice their concerns with the government, members of civil society said at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. “We’ve observed that there is limited ...