Social development

Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Wednesday instructed police officials and local authorities to collaborate with registered NGOs to ensure that their work is carried out without disturbance or restriction. Mr Kheng said in a statement that registered NGOs are authorised to carry out their activities ...

The Ministry of Industry and Handicraft organised a training workshop on Thursday in Kratie province on how to make rice wine. The workshop was conducted following the case of toxic rice wine that killed several people and hospitalised many others in the province last month. ...

The number of people being held in Cambodian prisons has reached epidemic proportions, leading to overcrowding and corruption, and causing families to suffer unnecessarily, claims a report by local NGO Licadho. However, Ministry of Justice spokesman Chin Malin rejected the findings, saying the rise in ...

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, has urged the government to speed up land registration for indigenous people to prevent possible further land clearance by opportunists. She said this during a meeting with the Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and ...

Health Minister Mam Bun Heng said on Tuesday that not many people in the Kingdom go abroad for medical treatment. He was replying to a statement that said Cambodians tended to go to hospitals in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, India, China, and other countries for the ...

Officials of the Kampong Speu provincial environment department have stopped some 300 members of the ethnic Suoy minority from building demarcation posts on a 15ha plot in Oral district. They said the land is located within the protected Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary and are probing ...

Ahead of a mission to the Kingdom by UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia, a spokesman for the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) yesterday said Cambodia has never been sanctioned by the UN for violating human rights, noting that the rapporteur and other rights ...

The Swiss government will provide $12 million to the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals for three years more, Health Minister Mam Bunheng said on Sunday. He said Swiss Ambassador to Cambodia Ivo Siebber announced his government’s commitment on Thursday during a meeting with him at the ...

The Royal University of Phnom Penh’s department of psychology has seen a decrease in students and its dean has blamed a lack of human resources and decreased interest in the subject. Phan Chan Pov, dean of the psychology department at the university, said there are ...

The Interior Minister plans to meet with top officials from the country’s NGOs twice per year in an effort to address concerns raised by the groups and to gather recommendations for national development.​ ...

The Council of Ministers on Friday approved its national budget draft of about $6.7 billion for 2019, an increase of 11.4 percent over 2018, and NGOs now want to review it before it is sent to the National Assembly for ratification. According to the draft, ...

The UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, is to land in the Kingdom on Monday, in her first official visit since questioning the “genuineness” of the July 29 national elections, polls she claimed were “one-sided”. ...

Phnom Penh’s Dangkor district administration will tear down illegal houses and shops built on the bank of Prek Thnot river, said its administrative director Mok Puthea. He said illegal homes, shops, cafes and canteens in Teuk Thla village along the river in Kraing Pongro commune ...

Rice wine operations in Kratie province have been shut down indefinitely with immediate effect after a toxic batch recently killed several people and hospitalised others. Kratie provincial industry and handicraft department head Ny Chhun said the objective of the move is to reduce the harm ...

As of Sunday, the death toll from toxic rice wine consumption in Kratie province had increased to five. Forty others remain hospitalised, the provincial health department said. Department director Chhneang Sovutha said the sale of rice wine had been banned in the province’s Sambo district ...

Cambodia’s construction boom has pushed thousands of families into modern slavery in the brick industry through debt bondage, a report by researchers from London’s Royal Holloway University say. The blood bricks report was released on Tuesday following the sharp rise in Cambodian brick prices in ...

Indigenous people in Mondulkiri province’s Keo Seima district yesterday expressed concern over logging activities in the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary, which they claim is allowed by some commune authorities.​ ...

Ricketson said after his release from prison in September that he started helping poor Cambodian scavengers many years ago and will resume again. He and three others started a fund-raising website “Family By Family”, hoping to initially raise $50,000. ...

A committee of more than 20 national and international organisations filed a petition to the EU on October 10 to prevent it from signing a timber trade agreement with Vietnam, noting that the deal would be disastrous to the Kingdom’s forests. The petition claims Vietnamese ...

Cambodia’s foreign ministry on Thursday said a decision by the European Union to ramp up trade pressure on the country over human rights concerns was an “extreme injustice”, adding it risked destroying decades of development in the country. ...

ANZ Bank failed to meet its own human rights standards when it financed a Cambodian sugar plantation that was linked to forced evictions, child labour and workplace deaths, according to an Australian government investigation. ...

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Cambodia has reportedly “apologized” to the Cambodian government for publishing poverty statistics almost three times as high as the official estimate. ...

Poverty in Cambodia has fallen dramatically over the last two decades, and continues to fall at a rapid pace, said a high official of the UNDP to Khmer Times yesterday. All the poverty rateslines, either based on income and other dimensions, have seen big reductions at a ...

Authorities in Kratie province yesterday demolished a dozen family farms deemed illegal in Snuol district’s Khsoem commune. A villager who requested anonymity said that the demolition was conducted by provincial and district authorities along with police and military police officers. ...