Population and censuses

Immigration officials yesterday sought to dial back public remarks by Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak, who on Wednesday appeared to tell reporters that the more than 100 Montagnard asylum seekers currently waiting to have their claims assessed would be summarily deported. ...

Less than a month after the government announced that more than 170 Montagnard asylum seek­ers would have their refugee applications processed, an Interior Min­istry spokesman said on Wednesday that the group had not met the criteria for refugee status and would be returned to Vietnam. ...

Patrick Heuveline sat among villagers in Cambodia, showing them photos of his daughter to establish common ground with a group of people whose culture he had yet to fully understand.Heuveline, a UCLA sociology professor since 2007, has now spent about 15 years studying the effects ...

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) yesterday said that it would divide between itself and the Cambodian government the duties of processing and potentially relocating the scores of Montagnard asylum seekers whose claims the government finally agreed to hear on Wednesday. ...

In a seeming about-face, the government has backed away from its looming deadline to deport more than 100 Montagnards currently seeking asylum in Cambodia, instead pledging to “expedite” the process of assessing their refugee status. ...

The U.N. refugee agency warns the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is likely to exceed 60 million in 2015.The UNHCR has released its Mid-Year Trends 2015 report covering global forced displacement during the first six months of this year. ...

Economists say Cambodia is not facing the risk of an aging population, as is happening in richer countries around the region, but it must still plan for a future when its younger generations grow old. ...

Surveys are rare in Cambodia and opinion polls indicating which way the electorate intends to vote are even rarer. That partially explains why so many other commentators failed to predict the hefty swing against Prime Minister Hun Sen at the last national poll. ...

A year-long crackdown on illegal immigration equated to a threefold increase in deportations in the first 11 months of 2015, with 4,312 foreigners sent home versus just 1,307 in the same period last year, according to a Department of Immigration report obtained yesterday. ...

Officials with the Interior Ministry and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday that a fifth person from Australia’s refugee camps on Nauru had arrived in Cambodia, but declined to provide any details. ...

The General Department of Identification issued some 2.8 million identification cards between January and October as part of an effort to bring a new generation of cards to some 10.9 million Cambodians by 2017. ...

As countries that share a border (and the Mekong River), the Southeast Asian nations of Cambodia and Laos possess traits in common. Amongst them, relatively small populations that are predominantly young and Buddhist. ...

Australia’s refugee policies were condemned during a review by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Australia automatically detains asylum-seekers who arrive in the country without visas. Hundreds of detainees are sent for processing to offshore camps in the South Pacific in Papua New Guinea and ...

Early yesterday morning, 168 Chinese nationals were deported from Cambodia, following their arrest last month for allegedly using the Kingdom as a base from which to extort money from victims in China, police said. ...

Immigration department director Sok Phal said Tuesday that Cambodia will be taking in only one of the two refugees who volunteered to resettle here during a delegation’s visit to Australia’s refugee center on the South Pacific island of Nauru in late September, but did not ...

About 400 parishioners at the Christian Evangelical International Ministry in Phnom Penh were singing hymns when 15 armed police officers rushed through the doors on Saturday and rounded up all of the Nigerian men present, according to Peter Ike, a preacher’s assistant at the church. ...

The government deported 2,420 people from the Kingdom in the first nine months of 2015, according to updated figures from the General Department of Immigration released on the National Police website on Wednesday.​ ...

As the United States commits to admitting 10,000 refugees from the current conflict in Syria, Cambodian refugees who arrived in the U.S. some 35 years ago say more needs to be done to help refugees resettle in order to prevent further suffering and future social ...

Vuthy Tik was born in Cambodia. He and his family arrived in the United States in 1982 after having fled the war between Khmer Rouge forces and advancing Vietnamese troops. In 2002, the US threatened Cambodia with aid cuts if it did not agree to ...

Refugees resettled in Cambodia as part of a multi-million-dollar deal with Australia have reportedly moved into private accommodation, five months after arriving in the Asian nation. ...

The first group of refugees to arrive in Cambodia as part of a controversial deal the government signed with Australia last year are now renting their own apartments and searching for jobs, having left their temporary accommodations in Phnom Penh, the International Organization for Migration ...

The first group of refugees to arrive in Cambodia as part of a controversial deal the government struck with Australia a year ago have moved out of their temporary accommodations in Phnom Penh, the Australian government said Thursday. ...

A Rohingya refugee who landed in Phnom Penh in June as part of a controversial resettlement deal with Australia is likely back in Burma after requesting to return home, according to the Interior Ministry. ...

As 24 Montagnards returned to Vietnam on Thursday after Cambodia refused to process their asylum claims, rights groups criticized the U.N.’s refugee agency for assisting the government in repatriating the group to a country where they claim to have fled from persecution. ...