Civil society

Cambodia’s human rights groups are continuing to seek ways to prevent three draft judicial reform bills from becoming law. The drafts have already passed the National Assembly, but they have not been signed by the king. ...

More than 100 families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with authorities, claiming a rubber giant – already accused of illegal logging – filled in two natural lakes, provincial officials said yesterday. Villagers, along with government officials, say Vietnamese company Hong Anh Gai ...

Hundreds of families due to be displaced by the planned 108-MW Stung Chhay Areng dam were called to a meeting Tuesday with provincial authorities, who presented a plan for relocation and then distributed gifts of shrimp paste and MSG. Heng Samnang, a staffer for local NGO ...

As part of a trio of long-awaited judicial laws passed last month by the National Assembly, the country’s judicial system is set to integrate a number of new provincial appeal courts, expanding access to the appeal process to people imprisoned outside Phnom Penh. But the only ...

Three separate communities from across the country were in Phnom Penh on Monday to petition Prime Minister Hun Sen to personally intervene to help settle their various land disputes. Communities affected by alleged land grabs in Phnom Penh and beyond often appeal directly to Mr. Hun ...

Arrest, detention and even an upcoming trial can’t sway 68 Khmer Krom families faced with eviction to give up a bitter land dispute over a bird sanctuary in Takeo province. After being charged in April with illegally occupying state land, three representatives from Sangkum Meanchey village ...

The army created a new platoon on Monday to guard an area near the Areng Valley in Koh Kong province, where hundreds of ethnic minority residents have fiercely resisted plans by a Chinese company to build a hydropower dam that would flood their ancestral lands. The ...

In many restaurants in Phnom Penh, wild meat is readily available. Walk into one of these, and you’ll be able to order deer, wild pig or even monitor lizards. Some places sell even rarer meat, from endangered animals like the pangolin. Wildlife conservation officials say the ...

The Arbitration Council Foundation, credited with helping resolve about 1,700 industrial disputes, has reached verbal agreement with a Swedish aid agency to receive funding until the end of 2016, a spokesman said yesterday. But members of the labour-dispute resolution body desire a more permanent solution that ...

Relevant organizations have been actively cooperating with the government in providing transportation service for illegal migrant workers to return to their home after they were sent back by the junta in Thailand. The temporary estimation for the aid so far amounts to nearly 200,000$. The government ...

A week after it called off a failed sweep of the city’s vagrants, City Hall held a meeting with four NGOs and district authorities Friday in which they agreed to form a joint committee to conduct a census of street sellers and beggars, according to ...

Every week, dozens of diabetics gather at a home in the Boeng Kak lake neighborhood to have their weight, blood sugar levels and blood pressure checked. They are among 12,000 impoverished people across the country taking part in the NGO MoPoTsyo’s peer support program, which allows ...

Following an exodus of more than 200,000 Cambodian workers from Thailand in the past two weeks, the junta has urged Cambodia to expedite planned border offices that will facilitate legal labour migration. Responding to that request, Cambodia announced yesterday that the first “one-stop service office” would ...

The families of four people from Pailin province’s Krinh village who have been incarcerated since March for allegedly living on state land are calling for their release. Fifty-year-old Nheb Nharn said that he and his wife, Om Som Ath, had lived on the land in Stung ...

Police in Kampong Thom province shut down a forest-protection training session yesterday, citing fears that it was encouraging residents to protest against logging in Prey Lang, activists and residents have said. Sar Mory, a deputy of the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN), said that his group organised ...

A conservation group has said its recent trip to Laos revealed that construction on a controversial hydropower dam decried by neighbouring Mekong countries is already under way. International Rivers representatives visiting the proposed site of the 260-megawatt Don Sahong Hydropower Project earlier this month say they ...

Cambodia improved its performance in this year’s Global Peace Index, climbing seven places from last year to reach 106 out of the 162 countries ranked in the study. The improvement is relative, though, with the impact of violence having cost an estimated $1.5 billion. The Institute ...

The activist Independent Monk Network has called on the Ministry of Cult and Religion to release paperwork proving that an agreement it struck with NagaCorp to help construct an electricity substation at Phnom Penh’s Buddhist Institute does not involve the selling of any of the ...

Following last week’s street sweep, children as young as 7 years old were kept in Phnom Penh’s notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre, eyewitnesses, staff and those targeted by the initiative have told the Post, directly contradicting government denials offered earlier this week. Standing at the centre’s ...

Tigers and black bears look nothing alike, but their identical names in some Khmer dialects left some thinking that one of Cambodia’s most endangered species may be attacking people in the Cardamom Mountains. Sitting outside his Santre commune home in Pursat province’s Kravanh district, with bandages ...

Activists working in Prey Lang forest have accused military and police officers of being behind two illegal timber hauls they have intercepted. In the first case, an estimated 50 cubic metres of timber being transported through Kampong Thom’s Sandan district on homemade tractors was found last ...

Six families that were evicted from the Boeng Kak lake community, including long-time activist Heng Mom, confirmed Wednesday that they had accepted a deal from Phnom Penh City Hall for plots of land and titles in the same neighborhood. The families have agreed to plots of ...

It was difficult enough for Savoeurn Dimang when, until a month ago, he was one of just three teachers running the local primary school in Kors Kralor district’s Samrong Leu village. But now, with one teacher having left for South Korea and the other bowing out ...

With a number of homeless, beggars and street sellers who were rounded up in caged vans last week still unaccounted for, several of those targeted by the street sweep claimed yesterday that they had been held in Phnom Penh’s notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre. Homeless ...