Aid and development

The Japanese and U.S. governments are set to launch a joint project to help empower women in developing countries in Asia, including Cambodia and Myanmar, as well as Africa, officials of both governments said Saturday. The two governments came up with the project as both Prime ...

Cambodia plans to distribute 100,000 condoms on Valentine Day in cooperation with partners, health ministry of Cambodia on Monday announced that it planned to distribute 100,000 condoms on Feb 14, Valentine day. ...

Newly approved plans by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to fix mistakes it made on a $143 million railway project appear to water down recommendations proposed by the Bank’s own review panel, and could impose the costs of the plan on the very families who ...

The Cambodian and Lao governments pushed for the conclusion of demarcation between the two countries as soon as possible, according to a senior Cambodian government official. The decision was made during a visit of Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this week, said KOA Kimhourn, Minister attached ...

China on Friday delivered 26 military trucks and 30,000 sets of military uniforms to Cambodia in order to help relieve the difficulties of the Cambodian army. At a handover ceremony held at the Trucking Battalion No. 99 on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, Chinese ...

In a rare admission, the Asian Development Bank has surprisingly acknowledged its own shortcomings following a controversial railway rehabilitation project in Cambodia that sparked complaints from thousands of displaced local residents affected by forced resettlements, insufficient compensations and neglect of their human rights. The concerns were confirmed by the Compliance ...

The Ministry of Defence will dispatch more than 300 members of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) to Mali as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, a senior government official said yesterday. ...

Two suppliers of mosquito nets to Cambodia found to have bribed officials to gain contracts under the Global Fund’s health grant scheme have had their contracts renewed. The two firms, Sumitomo Chemical and Vestergaard Frandsen, were found by the fund’s Office of the Inspector General in ...

In May of 2010, just four days after their family was resettled in Battambang province, two children, accompanied by their sister-in-law, walked to a pond. Stories differ as to why they were there. Rights groups say they went to bathe and collect water. Police claim ...

On the second day of Phnom Penh’s monthlong public bus experiment, there was a visible uptick in passengers Thursday traveling the single route along Monivong Boulevard. About a dozen passengers interviewed, who included civil servants, NGO staff and a large number of uniformed students, were ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen left on Thursday for two-day visit to Laos. The delegation accompanying Hun Sen included Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Cabinet Minister Sok An and other members of the Royal Government. A number of agreements will be signed during his visit. The Ministry of Foreign ...

A U.N. rights envoy suggested Thursday that Cambodia lift a ban on public gatherings in the capital imposed amid a violent crackdown on demonstrators a month ago. Maina Kiai, the U.N.’s global Special Rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and association, made the suggestion to Foreign ...

Thach Ry, a 64-year-old Khmer Krom man, fled Vietnam in 2008 after authorities there tried to arrest him for protesting the government’s treatment of his community. Arriving in Cambodia with his wife and daughter, authorities here tried to arrest him, too, he said, so like many ...

Thanks to a crowd-sourcing campaign spearheaded by grassroots map developers Urban Voice Cambodia, residents of Phnom Penh can now access a map pinpointing flood-prone areas in the capital during rainy season. Updated online yesterday, the map was generated by citizens, who contributed 119 reports of flooding over a ...

Ten buses set off Wednesday morning along Monivong Boulevard in Phnom Penh on a month-long test-run to determine if the public is ready to jettison their motorbikes and luxury cars and hop on board mass transport. This is the second attempt by the Japanese International Cooperation ...

Cambodia’s strong economic growth and foreign investment are subject to “considerable” downside risks, the International Monetary Fund has warned. A staff report released in Washington late Tuesday said “economic activity remains strong driven by robust exports, with garment exports helped by preferential access to European Union.” At ...

A fleet of 10 municipal buses was set to roll out early this morning, commencing a one-month public bus service trial along a single route on Monivong Boulevard. If successful, the bus route will mark the first step in establishing a long-overdue public transit system to ...

Cambodia greeted about 460,000 Chinese tourists last year, up 38 percent from 333,900 in a year earlier, according to a report of the Ministry of Tourism on Tuesday. China is the second largest source of tourists to Cambodia after Vietnam, the report said. Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong ...

Amid falling local production in Italy, officials there are calling on the European Union to scrap a preferential trade agreement that gives Cambodia’s rice exports duty-free advantages in the global market. According to a January 31 report from rice industry publication Oryza, members of the Italian ...

Work on a $143 million donor project to renovate the country’s creaking railway system, which is already over budget and years behind schedule, is now indefinitely postponed due to a lack of funds, with more than 300 km of rail still to be laid, a ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has for the first time admitted to major flaws in its efforts to protect the roughly 4,000 families losing land to a $143 million project it is funding to rehabilitate Cambodia’s dilapidated railway system. On Friday, the ADB said it would ...

A call for the Cambodian government to lift its controversial ban on public assembly is among 34 such recommendations it has chosen to defer in the wake of last week’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights situation. The UN on Saturday released a ...

The Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) is looking to increase its annual budget to $33 million this year amid a need to upgrade its life-saving equipment, an official said yesterday. Approximately $10 million has already been raised, according to CMAC director Heng Ratana, who expressed confidence ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen asked Britain to help Cambodia on human resource development. Hun Sen and Hugo Swire, British Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs, had a meeting Friday at the Peace Palace. ...