Aid and development

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 is nearing completion of a policy aimed at strengthening the Kingdom’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a senior official said yesterday. Minister for Industry and Handicraft Cham Prasidh yesterday told reporters his ministry was preparing a comprehensive SME policy with the purpose of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen returned from South Korea on Monday having struck a series of deals with Seoul, including an agreement to explore the creation of a South Korean-funded agricultural university in Cambodia, according to one of Mr. Hun Sen’s advisers. Speaking to reporters at Phnom ...

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 ...

Plans for a universal health care system will be included in the 10-year strategy to strengthen Cambodia’s social welfare, according to a government official, as a new report reveals almost three-quarters of Cambodians lack any legal health coverage. The study, released this week by the International ...

Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen has committed to stopping new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections by 2020, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said. The news came following Cambodian government’s decision to allocate $3.7 million from 2015 to 2017 to HIV treatment. ...

The European Union has agreed to investigate forced displacement claims in relation to Cambodia’s troubled sugar industry. The move could see thousands of villagers compensated for illegally confiscated land and loss of earnings. The Clean Sugar Campaign – which has been calling on the EU to ...

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 Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced Monday that it would provide over 800 million U.S. dollars in concessional finance to Cambodia over five years to support the Southeast Asian nation in economic development and poverty reduction. ...

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 drastically reduced the amount of human rights recommendations it will implement as part of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review, saying they were overly repetitive. While Cambodia was criticised for deferring recommendations, which dealt with issues such as freedom of expression and the ...

Despite one success story emerging in the trade of Cambodia-generated carbon credits, immediate prospects for the environmental trading scheme in Kingdom remain few. Securing buyers of carbon credits for Cambodian projects is a well-known difficulty. Pact, however, left the project in July 2013 when the ...

The International Republican Institute is urging the ruling party and opposition work toward political reform. Jessica Keegan, the group’s Cambodia country director, told VOA Khmer in an interview in Washington that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and the Cambodia National Rescue Party should seek common ground ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved an 18-million-U.S. dollars loan to build a ferry terminal and other infrastructure in Cambodia’s southern Kampot province to open up new opportunities for tourism, the bank said on Tuesday. ...

Two of the major donors who have supported Cambodia’s highly successful fight against HIV/AIDS are set to make significant cuts to their funding, putting pressure on the government to increase its own spending, officials and experts said. Both the Global Fund, which has contributed more than ...

USAID has announced a regional project to train hundreds of instructors and students to be more competitive for Asean integration at the end of next year. Many young Cambodians say they fear the impending competition from an EU-like economic integration that would free up goods and ...

European diplomats called on Interior Minister Sar Kheng yesterday to express their concerns about the recent spate of activists’ arrests, with the minister reportedly saying that he believed a one-year sentence speedily handed down to seven Boeung Kak lake protesters last week was rather “heavy”. ...

Officials at the World Bank, which in 2011 froze new loans to Cambodia amid a furore surrounding the Boeung Kak lake evictions, have approved preliminary proposals to issue funding for a project that could see families forcibly removed in Kampong Thom province. Under the World Bank’s ...

Japanese government granted US$ 2.1 million in grand aid on Monday for road improvement project in Cambodia. The grand aid agreement was signed by Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and Japanese Ambassador to Cambodia, Yuji Kumamaru, for the implementation of the project ...

The large loans China offered at the 9th East Asia Summit are vital to regional countries in their connectivity construction, a senior Cambodian official said on Thursday. Kao Kim Hourn, minister attached to Prime Minister Hun Sen, made the remarks at a press conference at ...

When Hay Bunny left her home in Prey Veng province some five years ago to find a job in Phnom Penh, she was not expecting to wind up living in a small tin shack hemmed in by dozens of nearly identical dwellings on a single ...

Cambodia’s international donors met Tuesday to decide whether they will comply with the government’s recent move to increase the per diem that civil servants receive for attending work-related, out-of-office events. In July, Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on a sub-decree raising the Daily Subsistence Allowance ...