Legal framework

Efforts to empower women at a sub-national level are drastically under-funded, according to research released yesterday. ...

Nearly four decades after fleeing Cambodia as a child, a tearful Michael Vannak Khem Misie­wicz returned to his home country in De­cember 2010 on the U.S. Navy guid­ed-missile destroyer he commanded; his fall from grace has been equally dramatic. ...

Large volumes of cigarettes are being smuggled from Cambodia to Vietnam as the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday approaches, despite Vietnamese authorities’ efforts to deter the situation. ...

A protest against city hall’s decision to clear residents’ land for a new road on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar peninsula without paying compensation yesterday entered its second day. ...

A group of over 50 protesters gathered in front of Takeo Provincial Court on Monday demanding government intervention after allegedly being scammed out of $160,000 by a provincial savings association, 30 of whom were summoned to provincial court yesterday in response to their case being ...

Cambodia and Singapore have deposited their respective instruments of ratification for the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP) with ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh, it was learned. ...

An Indian company planning to extract 500 tons of rock per day from beneath Pheak village in O Yadauv, Ratanakiri this year has promised locals, again, that their digging will have little effect on the mine’s surrounding forest and homes, and that they will replace ...

After over 100 villagers in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district spent three days protesting a sand dredging operation near their homes in Srey Chang village, the company responsible for allegedly affecting villager’s jobs and drinking water source agreed to stop their project in its entirety.  ...

Roughly ten residents from the Kien Kleang community set fire to tires in protest of a City Hall development near National Road 6A, along which the majority of the community lives, after bulldozers began felling their fences and clearing their land.  ...

After over 100 villagers in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district spent three days protesting a sand dredging operation near their homes in Srey Chang village, the company responsible for allegedly affecting villager’s jobs and drinking water source agreed to stop their project in its entirety. ...

Hundreds of logs of timber, including luxury wood, as well as sawmill camps were torched at a controversial Vietnamese-owned economic land concession in Mondulkiri province’s Keo Seima district in an apparent bid to destroy evidence of illegal logging ahead of a raid by a new ...

Thirty-one evicted Borei Keila community families received flats and another four families got $15,000 buyouts on Saturday as part of a “lucky draw” organised to resolve their years-long land dispute. ...

About 50 Phnom Penh residents gathered On Sunday to rally against a planned road on Chroy Changva peninsula that will run alongside a massive $3 billion development project. The 12-meter-wide road will be located just 100 meters behind National Road 6A. ...

In response to the Facebook comment of a medical student, Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided to lower the final exam fee for medical students from about $125 to $25. ...

Cambodia’s National Police have joined the fray in an ongoing crackdown against illegal logging, starting their own “mission group” following the creation of a military police task force last week. ...

The ministries of health and information are working together to put some teeth into last year’s law restricting the advertisement of tobacco products to sale locations. ...

Six months after it started construction, Kith Meng’s Royal Group has been ordered to demolish a nearly finished jetty on O’Tres Beach near Sihanoukville, with local officials saying the tycoon’s company was never granted permission to build it in the first place. ...

In a joint statement, civil society and labor leaders urged the government to accept changes to the law as they continue to discuss it. ...

In a move to crack down on future illegal logging, the government has created a special Commission, led by human rights group Adhoc, which will review and cancel any licenses of companies that violate forestry laws. ...

Next week, Cambodia will join a conference focused on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The conference, to be held in Washington D.C. on January 27th, is part of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), started in 2003 to keep bomb parts ...

Unions yesterday called for further discussion of the draft trade union law after a bipartisan committee tasked with examining the controversial legislation concluded on Tuesday having agreed to few substantive changes. ...

After seeing a signing ceremony interrupted by protesters on Tuesday, officials from the joint committee for Borei Keila housing solutions yesterday inked compensation deals with 32 out of 56 evicted families. ...

Authorities from the government’s new anti-logging task force swooped into Stung Treng yesterday and inspected timber stockpiles belonging to the Kingdom’s most prominent logging magnate, Try Pheap, who has been accused of reaping immense profits from the clear-cutting of Cambodian forests for years. ...

Authorities raided yet another rubber plantation on Tuesday as part of a new dragnet to catch illegal loggers in eastern Cambodia, said Eng Hy, spokesman for the National Military Police. ...