The poor

Delegations from the five lower Mekong states met with officials from the Asia-Pacific region, the US and Europe yesterday to convene the 9th Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) and Friends of the Lower Mekong (FLM) Regional Working Group aimed at devising strategies to strengthen infrastructure, connectivity ...

The economic stability of Cambodian households took a beating during the El Nino weather cycle that enveloped the region during the last dry season, resulting in drought conditions that drove many families into debt and lower income brackets, a new study has found. The study, released ...

A project funded by USAID’s Supporting Forest and Biodiversity initiative is helping local communities relying on forests as their means to earn a living by tapping into an alternate source of income. ...

Efforts by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to restore the living standards of families evicted by its railway rehabilitation project continue to fall far short of expectations, and urgent action is needed if the bank is to comply with its own safeguard policies, according to ...

Financial markets in Cambodia have to serve more people, especially the poor, with more products at a lower cost and the key challenge lies in creating a broader interconnected financial ecosystem that reaches populations that cannot access banks, said industry experts. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen will leave for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia this week for the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit starting on July 15. ...

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), met yesterday to discuss strategies to address the vulnerabilities facing Cambodia’s small-scale farmers and landless poor. ...

Police forcibly removed a dozen of the city’s homeless – four of them children – from the streets of central Phnom Penh yesterday, carting them off to the notorious Prey Speu Social Affairs Centre, where two people died last November. ...

Backed by the U.N., Cambodia on Wednesday launched a national action plan to completely eliminate hunger in the country by 2025, the first step in an ambitious initiative that the government signed on to last year. ...

An American horticulturalist is in Cambodia providing training in a unique farming method that proponents believe can improve food security in some of the country’s remotest regions.      ...

Cambodian NGOs and journalists were invited to China last week by the China Foundation for Peace and Development (CFPD) for a discussion on sustainable development in the Kingdom.   ...

More than 60 percent of mothers and young children in Cambodia are suffering from dangerously low levels of iodine in what a new study describes as a “serious public health problem.”   ...

The United Nations World Food Program has extended its activities in Cambodia for 30 months from July 2016 to Dec. 2018 in order to improve food and nutrition security for the most vulnerable children in the country, Gianpietro Bordignon, WFP Representative to Cambodia, said Wednesday. ...

In an effort to identify and address “key barriers that impede the realization of children’s rights in Cambodia,” the Cambodian government and UNICEF Cambodia officially signed a new Country Program Action Plan yesterday, entering a three-year partnership that will cost an estimated $65 million, according ...

Professor of the University of Leeds, UK, Mr. Chheang Vannarith, said that ASEAN citizens, 60 million people directly affected by the conflict environmental Mekong River and ASEAN countries need to cooperate with each other to solve this problem so that the rich and poor gap ...

Each year, millions of dollars flow into the tourism hub of Siem Reap, the gateway city to Angkor Wat. Yet just outside of town, the effects of that economy are hardly felt at all. Out here, people struggle to make a living, and grinding poverty ...

Scientists warn that plans to build dams across Tonlé Sap, south-east Asia’s greatest lake, could be an ecological timebomb threatening the food security of millions. In a few months’ time, monsoon rains will more than quadruple the size of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap, south-east Asia’s greatest lake ...

Despite the creation of a 200-hectare conservation area, fishing communities on south-east Asia’s largest freshwater lake fear their way of life is slipping away. ...

An education program in Cambodia founded by a Taiwanese charity has benefited nearly 10,000 Cambodians over the past five years, which is comparable to a modern equivalent of the famed agricultural missions dispatched by the Taiwanese government to aid diplomatic allies in the 1960s. The ...

The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the Mekong river. With world leaders meeting in Paris next week for crucial UN climate talks, John Vidal journeys down south-east Asia’s vast waterway – a place that encapsulates some of the dilemmas they ...

Despite recent announcements of large development projects throughout Cambodia focusing on so-called “affordable housing” for the emerging middle class, there remains a massive gap in the market for quality affordable housing for the poor; especially the urban poor as more rural Cambodians flock to cities ...

Cambodia will continue to see reductions in poverty, hunger and malnutrition as it continues to prioritize development of the agricultural industry, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ouk Rabun said on Friday at an event to mark World Food Day in Kandal Province.  ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has outlined Cambodia’s strategy for tackling poverty in a keynote speech to a United Nations forum in Beijing marking the 2015 International Day for Eradication of Poverty.Addressing the gathering of leaders on Friday, the premier lauded the 1 billion people brought ...

Cambodia has experienced the largest decrease in hunger since 2000 among countries with severe levels of hunger, according to a new report released by three international NGOs, and is close to qualifying as a nation of “moderate” concern. ...