Civil society

Human rights workers say the US and other countries should censure Thailand over fisheries practices that mean near-slavery for many Cambodians and others. An investigative report by the UK-based Guardian newspaper exposed serious abuses in the Thai fishing trade, where workers are cheated of pay, kept ...

Preah Vihear officials abruptly barred environmental activists from holding a planned public forum Wednesday, with the activists claiming it was for political reasons and officials saying the group had failed to go through the proper channels. Seng Sokheng, secretariat coordinator of Community Peace Building Network, said ...

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Surya Subedi, will visit the country next week to assess the government’s progress in improving human rights and democratic and land reforms, his office said Wednesday. During the 10-day fact-finding mission, beginning June ...

The Phnom Penh municipality on Tuesday began its latest campaign to clear the city’s streets of vagrants, rounding up truckloads of beggars and sellers at traffic lights and holding them at district offices and the municipal social affairs department. Street people across the city were seen ...

The minister of mines and energy on Monday said a new private-public working group will study the impacts of a proposed hydropower dam in Koh Kong opposed by hundreds of resident ethnic minority families and find them an adequate resettlement site. A Cambodian consultancy, SBK Research ...

A private clinic aiming to provide medical care to factory workers in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (SEZ) will open this month, the health centre’s managing director said yesterday. ...

U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Jeff Daigle visited In Komar Primary School in Kampong Thom province today to highlight a $20 million U.S. government school feeding program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and implemented by the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), ...

A journalist who filed a complaint with the Pursat Provincial Court alleging that a soldier threatened to kill him over an illegal logging report withdrew his complaint after the soldier was internally disciplined, court officials and military police said Monday. Sak Rom, a reporter with Kapit ...

Phnom Penh municipality on Monday ordered a curb on vagrants entering the city and a roundup of beggars, homeless people and children selling items at traffic lights. In the directive, signed by deputy city governor Seng Ratanak, City Hall orders the 12 district governors, its social ...

Tuesday morning, not long after dawn, a line of students formed outside En Komar Primary School, in Kampong Thom province. Students were waiting to receive breakfast from their teachers. The breakfasts are part of a World Food Program initiative that aims to feed 3.5 million students ...

Council of Ministers secretary of state Keo Remy wants to see female police officers controlling female protesters at future demonstrations, he said at a press conference on Friday. Mr. Remy said female protesters have adopted a new “style” of demonstration under the direction of NGOs who ...

Cambodia has been cited as one of 10 countries in which torture and extrajudicial killings are common, in a submission made this week by the Hong Kong-based Asia Legal Resource Center to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. ...

Twenty-three labor activists are free from jail, but Freedom Park remains closed to the public. The park is a government-sanctioned place of protest, but it was closed after opposition demonstrations there in April. Phnom Penh spokesman Long Dimanche said there is “no threat” of protests ...

Deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha has drawn the ire of the government and civil society groups after on Wednesday accusing Vietnam of orchestrating the Koh Pich bridge stampede that killed more than 350 people in 2010 as part of a plot to “eliminate the Khmer ...

Hundreds of families from Kratie province’s Snuol district who were promised new plots of land after a Vietnamese rubber firm evicted them last month have complained that provincial officials are allowing hundreds of interlopers to stake a claim instead. The 405 families were evicted from the ...

A new payment system for retired soldiers in Oddar Meanchey province has resulted in late payments for nearly 50 retirees. Government officials recently opened Acleda Bank accounts for retired soldiers, who used to pick up pension payments at the provincial social affairs department, said Mok Vanvuthy, ...

Cambodian human rights organizations say they have major concerns over a deal with Australia that could send unwanted refugees to Cambodia. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee says Cambodia’s track record of human rights abuse and corruption make people “living on the margins” vulnerable to abuse. Australia ...

Some 400 students, monks and activists were stopped from a peaceful march for Environmental Day on Thursday, as they sought to deliver petitions to the Ministry of Environment and other institutions calling for an end to deforestation. Cambodia’s forests provide many services to the rural poor, ...

A youth group plans to march in support of World Environment Day today, despite being told not to by municipal authorities. ...

Despite sustained levels of high economic growth, most people in Cambodia are still eating rice at every meal, with little meat, fish or vegetables, meaning undernutrition will remain high and stunting common among children if the government does not scale up targeted health programs, a ...

At the beginning of the school year, Mony Vutha was handed a new, mandatory addition to the grade four curriculum that neither he nor any of his colleagues were trained to teach: English. Vutha’s two years of English lessons more than a decade ago made him ...

The NGO Results International has been studying nutrition in Cambodia, and found that despite Cambodia’s good economic growth, 40 per cent of children under five there, have stunted growth. Cambodia may produce plenty of food, but its people are not eating a balanced diet. ...

Laos will push ahead with its ambition to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” planning a Mekong River dam that has drawn opposition from neighbors and threatens to involve China and the U.S. Four Mekong River nations are scheduled to meet June 26-27 in Thailand to ...

Before he was arrested in January, Vorn Pov and the union he created were not widely known outside of activist circles. But when he emerged from Phnom Penh’s CC1 prison on Friday, he walked away as one of the highest-profile unionists in the country, and a ...