Civil society

A draft law to protect state secrets has been in the works for more than two years and could be submitted to the Council of Minister for review in two months’ time, a senior police official said yesterday. ...

Bokor Mountain, Kampot province – Spurred on by social media rumors that Vietnamese tourists are flocking to this colonial-era retreat for elaborate, hidden ceremonies at the graves of their ancestors, CNRP lawmaker Yem Ponhearith on Thursday led about 50 officials here on a fact-finding trek. ...

Government spokesman and four-star General Khieu Sopheak has threatened to sue an NGO worker over his “false allegations” about Montagnard asylum seekers. Sopheak said authorities had only arrested “illegal Vietnamese immigrants”, and called on Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc and the ...

The electoral reform working groups from the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP resumed talks Monday after canceling their meetings last week, with officials from both parties again defending their controversial push to ban NGOs from “insulting” parties during election campaigns. ...

More than 57,000 primary school-aged children across the country are currently missing out on an education, according to the Cambodian Consortium for Out of School Children (CCOSC), a new group set up to implement a major push to get young Cambodians into the classroom. Officially ...

The number of Cambodian women caught in abusive marriages in China is increasing dramatically, according to rights groups, which last year helped repatriate nearly 50 brides who had been either trafficked abroad or lured by the promise of a better life. Local rights groups Adhoc and ...

Following reports of endemic corruption and suppression of dissent in the Kingdom last year, Cambodia was once again classified by global watchdog Freedom House as “not free” in a generally bleak report released yesterday. In Freedom of the World 2015, Freedom House’s assessment of the real-world ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday released a statement condemning National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha for his admission that he sanctioned a “partisan use of force” in a January 15 speech in which he spoke of opposition protesters as the military police’s foes. ...

Sixteen local NGOs released a joint statement Thursday calling on Prime Minister Hun Sen to publicly repudiate National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha’s January 15 speech in which he said he learned strategy from Adolf Hitler. ...

Abuse, discrimination, exploitation and corruption are endemic in Cambodia’s prisons, spurred on by judicial and penal systems “driven by nepotism”, according to a new report from local rights group Licadho. The report, Rights at a Price: Life Inside Cambodia’s Prisons, which was released yesterday, details a ...

The International Organisation for Migration has told the Cambodian government it is willing to take part in the resettlement of refugees from Nauru if a number of conditions are met.​ ...

Civil society leaders on Sunday called on the country’s two major political parties to scrap plans to ban them from giving media interviews during election campaigns and from issuing statements that “insult” any party. CPP Deputy Prime Minister Bin Chhin and senior CNRP official Kuoy Bunroeun, ...

The Royal University of Phnom Penh plans to make its social work degree available to everyone next year, as young, locally trained graduates look to take the reins from foreign aid workers. RUPP Department of Social Work Faculty member Ung Kimkanika said the move would ...

Thirteen ethnic Montagnards have emerged from the jungles of Cambodia, where they hid for more than seven weeks after entering the country from Vietnam to flee alleged persecution, the United Nations and local authorities said Saturday. Eight of the Montagnards–including one woman–left their jungle hiding ...

Oxfam International, one of the first aid groups to work in Cambodia post-Khmer Rouge, has urged the hundreds of international NGOs (INGO) still operating in the country to consider their future roles and possible exit strategies. Speaking at the launch of two new research reports yesterday ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) will launch Wednesday a series of short films profiling communties affected by the country’s pervasive and volatile land conflict. The profiles highlights cases from Phnom Penh and four other provinces, and show that insecurity of tenure, the failure ...

An increasing number of Cambodians are dissatisfied with the direction the country is moving toward, according to results from a nationwide survey by the Asia Foundation. The foundation interviewed 1,000 people face to face in May and June of this year—prior to a political deal struck ...

Forty NGOs from around the world have called on the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to begin preliminary examinations into claims that Cambodia’s “ruling elite” were accused of committing crimes against humanity. On October 7, British lawyer Richard Rogers submitted ...

A Tauranga business and a charity have so far raised enough to provide 43 people with freshwater for the rest of their life in Kratie, a rural state of Cambodia. Good Trust, a registered charity where 100 per cent of proceeds goes directly to water projects, ...

After months of negative publicity surrounding its disgraced founder Somaly Mam, anti-trafficking NGO Afesip has taken the first tangible steps to resurrect itself, with a handful of remaining international donors traveling to Cambodia over the past week for “future strategy meetings.” ...

Forty national and foreign NGOs yesterday called on the government to ratify the International Labour Organization’s 2011 Domestic Workers Convention in order to better safeguard the rights of Cambodian domestic workers, both inside and outside of the country. The missive, which says that the Kingdom’s domestic ...

Chan Soveth, a longtime human rights defender, died of a heart attack on Wednesday. Colleagues say he was returning from celebrations to mark International Human Rights Day. He was 51. ...

Staff at the Phnom Penh Municipal Referral Hospital said Tuesday that they had no record of a recent visit from a man who died late last month at the Prey Speu social affairs center, contradicting claims made by a city official. Both a file search by ...

Human rights group (LICADHO) has called for the release of 18 activists who have been wrongfully imprisoned following a recent spate of arrests as Cambodia will celebrate International Human Rights Day on December 10th. In a statement issued today [Monday], the right group also condemns the ...