United Nations

More than five months after being appointed as the U.N.’s new special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith will make her first official visit to the country later this month, according to the government’s Human Rights Committee. ...

A group of 12 international and local human rights organizations sent a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday urging it to support a resolution addressing “the deteriorating human rights situation in Cambodia.” ...

A school meal program run by the World Food Program (WFP) has run out of funds, forcing it to transfer about half of its schools to government care. ...

In the inaugural issue of its bulletin on Cambodia’s $5.8-billion garment industry, the International Labor Organization said Thursday that business remained strong on the back of rising exports despite a 28-percent hike to the sector’s minimum wage in January. ...

U.N. human rights expert Maina Kiai on Thursday urged Cambodia’s Senate not to pass a controversial NGO law that the National Assembly approved this week, warning that the legislation could have “disastrous” effects. ...

Social affairs officials met Thursday with the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to discuss the notorious Prey Speu social affairs center, with the government giving permission for the U.N. to visit the center Friday and identify residents who require psychiatric assistance ...

Months away from the end of a 15-year plan to improve education in the country, officials announced Wednesday that Cambodia still needs to make strides to meet adult literacy benchmarks and set new priorities focusing on the country’s youngest students. ...

A United Nations development agency will open a new office in Phnom Penh following a meeting yesterday with Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong, an official has said. ...

Provincial authorities in Ratanakkiri province on the Vietnam border have yet to allow a team of UN workers to actively seek out a group of Montagnards potentially seeking asylum. UN refugee workers met with provincial officials for more than an hour on Wednesday, but no permission ...

The Cambodian government will allow UN representatives to seek out a group of Montagnards reportedly in hiding in Ratanakkiri province. Interior Minister Sar Kheng gave the green light for UN offices of human rights and refugees to look into the case, where at least 13 Montagnards ...

A UN delegation met with Ratanakkiri province’s deputy police chief yesterday afternoon to discuss the fate of 13 Montagnard asylum seekers who have been hiding in the province in recent weeks. The provincial administration, however, has continued to call for the group’s deportation. Deputy police chief ...

A UN special rapporteur will take the cause of Cambodia’s land-eviction battles and the abuses faced by those waging them to the UN Human Rights Council, according to a report released today. Michel Forst, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, will file ...

The president of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Monday hailed Cambodia for its efforts to preserve and develop world heritage sites, a Cambodian spokesman said. Hao is visiting Cambodia to attend the official launching of the ...

Citing Cambodia’s vulnerability to climate change, civil society groups have called for global responses to the issue as the United Nations prepares for its annual climate change convention in Lima, Peru. ...

Cambodia has reached out to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for help with resettling refugees it has agreed to take from Australia under a controversial deal signed last month, according to an IOM spokesman. ...

Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova has denounced the killing of journalist Taing Try in Cambodia on Oct. 12 and urged the authorities to ensure that those responsible are punished for their crime. Taing Try, 49, a freelance journalist for several local newspapers and a member ...

A study by the International Labor Organization, the U.N.’s labor body, shows most Cambodian garment workers do not eat enough nutritious food and that, as a result, many are anemic and even underweight. Now, a pilot project will feed workers at five factories a free ...

Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong addressed the UN’s General Assembly on Monday, in a speech that focused more on the threat of the Islamic State and international conflicts than it did on Cambodian issues. Hor Namhong told the Assembly that Cambodia supports joint international efforts to ...

Cambodia may be on the verge of a new era in human rights protection, an independent United Nations human rights expert declared today, adding that while the political momentum in the country was headed in a “positive direction,” a strong human rights infrastructure was still ...

A proposed project hopes to channel the widespread use of mobile phones among factory workers to bring the voice of the 600,000 Cambodians employed in the crucial garment sector into future wage negotiations. The project, which would collect information about working hours, conditions, wages and expenses ...

The UN and human rights groups called on the government Friday to honor its obligations as a party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and thoroughly investigate the disappearance of 16-year-old Khem Sopath, who was last seen lying ...

The UN Children’s Fund in Australia has warned volunteers and tourists to avoid visiting Cambodian orphanages following critical reports from the press in recent weeks. In a post on its website, UNICEF Australia said “these types of tours exploit children and their families for the financial ...

A controversial deal to allow Australia to send refugees to Cambodia is imminent and could be signed as early as this week, sources have told Fairfax Media. The Australian and Cambodian governments have been negotiating for months over a deal to resettle up to 1000 refugees ...

Driven by garment and improved agricultural export markets, Cambodia has bucked the wider trend of slowing Southeast Asian economies, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). ESCAP’s semi-annual Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific, published ...