Aid and development

The advent of Cambodia’s much-criticized NGO law was among the top “troubling” developments to take place across the globe last year, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association said in a report released Friday.   ...

Cambodia’s economy is expected to grow at 6.9 percent this year, the same rate it expanded last year, due to slowing growth in leading economies in region, especially China, Asia’s largest and the world’s second-largest economy, according to the World Bank. ...

Cambodia’s prime minister defended his government’s energy policy on Wednesday and hit back at environmentalists opposed to hydropower plants by suggesting their electricity be cut off and they should use resin torches instead. ...

The Japanese government Friday granted nearly $20,000 to repair and upgrade fascilities at schools in two provinces. ...

Cambodia ranked 143rd out of 188 countries in the U.N.’s latest Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure of development incorporating health, education and living standards, according to new figures released on Monday. ...

Australia has so far disbursed more than $3.5 million in aid to Cambodia as part of the agreement for its unwanted refugees to be resettled here, but the Interior Ministry’s spokesman is livid that the money has come into the country via development agencies rather ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday called on banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs) to suspend loan repayments by borrowers affected by this year’s drought, or either make the loans interest free or cut the rates. ...

After five years of building, the 24-million-U.S.-dollar Angkor Panorama Museum, invested by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), opened in northwest Cambodia’s Siem Reap city, a local English newspaper reported on Monday. ...

A Finance Ministry official said on Sunday that the government had yet to decide whether it would comply with Asian Development Bank (ADB) rules that families facing eviction from along the country’s old railway tracks be offered resettlement options better than the ones they have ...

Loans from Japan to Cambodia will help finance work on a key highway upgrade. The loan package totals US$150 million and will be used for the project to upgrade Cambodia’s National Road No 5. ...

The Chinese government has agreed to donate $3.5 million to build a ninth building inside the compound of the Senate on Norodom Boulevard, Senate Secretary-General Oum Sarith said on Tuesday following the signing ceremony in Phnom Penh. ...

A museum bankrolled by North Korea on Cambodia’s tourist trail in Siem Reap is ready to open, according to local media.The $10 million Grand Panorama Museum sits near Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat temple complex and is scheduled to open on December 4. ...

The United Nations and the Cambodian Ministry of Women’s Affairs will organize four major events across the country to raise awareness of the need to end violence against women and girls, according to a UN Women’s statement on Wednesday. ...

The European Parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on the Cambodian government to revoke the arrest warrant for opposition leader Sam Rainsy, with its parliamentarians suggesting some $435 million in aid be canceled if it is ignored. ...

An Angkor-themed museum funded and operated by North Korea, but located in Siem Reap, is finally set to open after years of delays.The vast Grand Panorama museum, set on a 4-hectare site just 3 kilometres from the temple complex, is due to open on December ...

A U.S. State Department official told the country’s Senate on Thurs­day that recent political events in Cambodia, including the beatings of lawmakers outside the Nation­al Assembly and the removal of opposition officials from their seats and positions in parliament, were a cause for “grave concern.” ...

The World Bank is considering yet another internally funded project in Cambodia that, if approved, would lift the organization’s four-year-old freeze on new lending to the country. ...

For many Southeast Asian countries, Japanese developmental aid may be synonymous with building bridges, roads and public facilities. But besides its infrastructure-building capacity, Japan is also boosting one of the strategic tools of diplomacy at its disposal: human resource development. ...

The World Bank could approve its first internally funded project in Cambodia in March, according to recently released reports, a move that would effectively end the freeze on new lending the Bank imposed on Cambodia over four years ago. ...

Despite failing to meet many of the expectations of its foreign donors over the past two decades, Cambodia’s government has never struggled to secure aid from abroad. ...

A three-year vocational training project aimed at creating employment opportunities in the electronics industry while eliminating electronics waste, or e-waste, wrapped up yesterday, with its organisers calling for more funding in order to continue its training component. ...

As Cambodia has the highest rate of deforestation among developing countries. Experts say that the country needs a more sustainable development plan to protect its ecosystem. ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday signed up to provide a total of 64 million U.S. dollars loan and grant to Cambodia for the projects of irrigation and malaria control system, according to an ADB statement. ...

The government has handed out the first 250 land titles to the more than 3,000 families in a World Bank-funded project for poor Cambodians that has been criticized by a local rights group for sticking many of those families with unusable land. ...