Social development

Open Cambodia A Mozilla/Aspiration Conference Open Web, Open Source, Open Knowledge 16-17 September 2011 Sunway Hotel, Phnom Penh Friday 16 September 8:00-8:30 Registration – Grand Mekong Hall, First Floor 8:30-10:15 Interactive Plenary 10:15-10:30 Coffee Break 10:30-12:00 Agenda Crowdsourcing: Session Development 12:00-1:00 Lunch – Provided at the Sun Café Restaurant, Ground Floor, Sunway Hotel 1:00-3:00 Break-Out I – Framing Sessions: ...

Laos wants to start construction this year on the $3.8 billion (Bt115 billion) Thai-financed Xayaburi hydropower plant on the Mekong River after changing the design of the dam to placate neighbouring countries opposed to the project. Laos completed a review of the dam recently to ease ...

Authorities in Kompong Thom province yesterday forced a pagoda to withdraw its invitation to host a workshop about forest protection, continuing their pressure on two NGOs that provide community legal education in the province, a monk and NGO worker said. Chin Neth, chief monk at ...

Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has summoned for questioning two rights group activists and a journalist over charges that they incited ethnic minority villagers in Lumphat district to violence in 2009, a court official said yesterday. The case against the three men – Adhoc provincial coordinator Pen ...

Kompong Thom provincial authorities have threatened to shut down two NGOs who have been providing free legal education to poor villagers in the province, accusing the groups of fomenting rural unrest against private investors. The NGOs, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights and the Natural ...

The government should abandon its current management of Prey Long forest and shift to a plan that conserves the forst while also optimizing its economic uses, such as agriculture, carbon credits and controlled timber exploitation, according to a recent report by the US Agency for ...

Officials working in Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary and in nearby communities said yesterday that they were receiving new motorbikes and digital cameras from businessman Try Pheap, who in recent months received large-scale rubber concessions in the Preah Vihear province sanctuary. Earlier this week, it was ...

Ten international organizations including Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and Global Witness have urged dozens of foreign ministers to consider freezing aid to Cambodia if the government passes the current draft of its proposed NGO law. In a letter sent Wednesday to 36 foreign ministers ...

A new high-end private hospital in Phnom Penh, a collaboration between Cambodia's Sokimex and Ho Chi Minh City's well-known Cho-Ray Hospital, is set to hire 280 Cambodian health care workers in the next year, according to a Sunday satatement posted on the City Hall website. ...

A simmering land dispute in Kratie province's Snuol Wildlife Sanctuary flared up Friday as hundreds of desperate villagers blocked National Road 76A for four hours in an effort to prevent the clearing of their homes and farms by a rubber company, villagers and human rights ...

With growing uncertainty in the US economy and an unfolding fiscal and debt crisis in the Eurozone after the global recession in 2008, Asia is expected to continue leading the global recovery. Under such circumstances, the 21st Century is emerging as the "New Asian Century", ...

Cambodia will receive a concessional loan package of $53.3 million US dollars from Japan to restore the irrigation canal system and another $700,000 dollars grant aid to enhance education materials for minerals resources and topology department of the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), the ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh briefly detained about 100 villagers yesterday who were distributing leaflets to raise awareness of the ongoing destruction of Prey Long, one of Cambodia's largest remaining primary forests. The leaflet distributors had their materials confiscated and were escorted to six commune offices ...

Singapore-listed firm HLH Group is planning to expand its presence in Cambodia with 90,000 hectares of corn, rice and soybean plantations planned over the next decade in Kompong Speu and Koh Kong provinces, an official at the company said yesterday. HLH Group came under scrutiny ...

More than one hundred villagers dressed as the forest people from the hit film "Avatar" protested in the Cambodian capital Thursday against the destruction of the country's Prey Lang forest...They say the forest, which is a source of livelihood for some 200,000 mainly indigenous people, ...

In response to the vision of land policy in Cambodia, which is to administer, manage, use and distribute land in an equitable, transparent, efficient, and sustainable manner in order to contribute to achieving national goals of poverty alleviation, ensuring food security, national resources and environmental ...

The government must correctly implement the Land Law and allow indigenous people greater access to collective titling of their native territories, human rights group Adhoc said yesterday in a statement. Although there is a provision in the Land Law allowing indigenous groups to obtain collective ...

Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court has ordered 40 families embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the wife of Minister of Industry Suy Sem to pay court fees of up to $155 each, or have their complaints dropped. The villagers, however, say they are too poor ...

About 90 garment factory workers fainted over a two-day period last week at Zhen Tai garment factory in Sen Sok district's Phnom Penh Thmei commune, union officials and police said yesterday, though accounts of what caused the mass fainting differed. Thirty workers first fainted on ...

Police and a human rights group said they rescued a 15-year-old girl from the training center of an overseas job recruitment agency in Kompong Chhnang province on Saturday. A rights worker said two more underage girls had been saved from being sent abroad to work ...

Cambodia on July 28th hosted the 3rd Greater Mekong Sub- Region Environment Ministers to look forward to sustainable economic development in the region and to talk about current projects to reduce harm for regions and also to minimize several environmental challenges affecting natural resources, forest and ...

Chevron Overseas Petroleum (Cambodia) has been actively exploring Cambodia’s offshore Block A, and applied for a permit to begin extraction from government authorities. Yesterday, The Post caught up with its President Steve Glick, who has been in his present role in Phnom Penh for about ...

Twenty-nine community representatives from Kampong Speu’s Phnom Sruoch district travelled in person to the National Assembly building in Phnom Penh yesterday to file a complaint against provincial governor Kang Heang and other officials, accusing them of “robbing a total of 950 hectares of farm land”.  ...

The European Union has said that it has no plans to suspend Cambodia’s duty-free trade access even though there have been concerns over land evictions as a result of economic land concessions. The EU is seeking that human rights are not the cost of trade ...