Human rights

The government affirmed its commitment to bilingual education for ethnic minority children in Cambodia’s northern provinces at a UNESCO conference in Bangkok last week. Speaking at the fourth International Conference on Language and Education: Multilingual Education for all in Asia and the Pacific, Ton Sa Im, ...

Koh Kong Sugar has offered to settle its yearslong dispute with Cambodian families who accuse its plantations of stealing their land, but the farmers remain wary of being able to secure a fair deal. The firm, a subsidiary of Thailand’s Khon Kaen Sugar Industry Limited (KSL), ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on the Ministry of Information to accelerate the drafting of a long-awaited freedom of information law that could see more transparency in the Kingdom’s government. According to a press release issued by the Council of Ministers after a cabinet meeting ...

Some 1,000 employees from one of Cambodia’s largest microfinance institutions gathered in the Koh Pich exhibition hall yesterday to watch A River Changes Course, the award-winning documentary about three Cambodians from different backgrounds all struggling to eke out a living in fast-changing times. Why Angkor Mikroheranhvatho (Kampuchea) ...

Declaring that it has “zero tolerance” towards land grabbing, Coca-Cola has agreed to investigate a long running case in Cambodia where villagers are seeking court action against a company accused of seizing their land to make way for plantations linked to the supply of sugar ...

Three families involved in a land dispute with a private company filed a complaint Monday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court accusing the company’s owner, businessman Khun Sear, of waging an ongoing campaign of intimidation as he tries to force the families from their homes ...

A senior US State Department official visiting the kingdom said yesterday that any solution to the current political deadlock would have to come from within Cambodia and not from foreign powers. Scot Marciel, principle deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, ...

Some 50 representatives of Phnom Penh’s embattled Boeng Kak community on Monday marched to the offices of the European Union and World Bank to request that the international bodies send observers to the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of anti-eviction activist Yorm Bopha on November 22. Ms. ...

Seven Vietnamese nationals arrested during simultaneous raids on a pair of massage parlors in central Phnom Penh on Thursday night have been sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court for their role in the alleged trafficking of minors, police and a child-protection NGO said Sunday. “We ...

A Cambodian court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former politician who shot and wounded three garment workers in 2012 but has yet to serve any time behind bars in a case that has prompted outrage from rights groups. Judge Taing Sun Lay also ...

The Cambodian and Malaysian governments will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) within three months that will restart the business of sending Cambodian domestic workers to the country after a two-year moratorium, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. After meeting with representatives from the Malaysian Home ...

As protests against land grabbing have increased in Phnom Penh in the past five years, so too have violent crackdowns by the authorities. Police have been criticised for their treatment of protesters – which has included beatings with electric batons and kicks to the stomach of ...

It has been one year since Cambodia announced that it was lifting its ban on intercountry adoptions beginning January 1, 2013, but despite praising Cambodia’s efforts to implement international regulations, countries that ban adoptions of Cambodians said this week that they were no closer to ...

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged convicted British pedophile Richard Fruin, 36, with sexually abusing two brothers, aged 8 and 11, at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, court officials said. While the court has yet to decide Fruin’s fate, his case—and many similar ...

Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district. Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Cambodia failed Monday to make its deadline to submit a key human rights report—known as the universal period review (UPR)—to the U.N., said Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee. Having missed the submission deadline, the government is now hoping to get its ...

As the dispute over July’s national election enters its fourth month, a civil society umbrella organization, the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA), is due to release a comprehensive report on widespread irregularities recorded during the ballot. The report will be followed by the drafting of a proposed ...

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have evicted nearly 1,000 families in 14 provinces in the past five years, ostensibly to build military bases, according to a report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The report outlined Adhoc’s concerns over ongoing land disputes between local communities and ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Sunday said that the CNRP would formally appeal to the CPP this week to resume negotiations to end the ongoing political deadlock, but said that the CPP would have to meet the CNRP’s conditions for a new round of talks. “Now ...

The government will today submit its second report to the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process that takes stock of human rights progress in each UN member state. Governments are required to report to the council every four and ...

Cambodia will submit a human rights report to the U.N. today for a universal periodic review (UPR), the second time it is participating in the process, according to the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit. Under the UPR process established in 2006, the Human ...