Social development

The CPP’s 68 lawmakers pushed a controversial NGO law through the National Assembly on Monday morning without debate and without the opposition CNRP, whose 55 members boycotted the session in protest over legislation they say the government could use to stifle dissent. ...

A group of NGOs on Monday told the World Bank to fix the land-rights problems surrounding its past projects in Cambodia before lifting a freeze on new lending to the country it imposed in 2011 to protest the mass eviction of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak ...

The National Assembly of Cambodia on Monday adopted a draft law on Associations and Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) despite a boycott from the opposition lawmakers and protests.​ ...

A British national and convicted pedophile, who served about three quarters of his two-year sentence for child sex abuse, will be deported to the U.K. by the end of the week, an immigration official said Sunday. ...

With CPP lawmakers expected to pass a highly controversial law regulating NGOs and associations Monday, City Hall said Sunday that it would use “many measures” to ensure that protesters are not able to rally outside the National Assembly. ...

Capping a week in which footage emerged of a tycoon viciously beating a female entertainer and a man entering a Phnom Penh school to slap a teenage girl, some 160 security personnel marched down the riverside here on Friday chanting slogans to conclude the “Good ...

Up to 1,500 new educators, almost all exclusively Muslims from the Cham Community in Cambodia, will be recruited to join the country’s teaching force. ...

Facing an opposition boycott and a European Union threat over foreign aid, the government plans to vote into law today a controversial draft law restricting NGOs. ...

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday calling on the Cambodian government to cancel a draft law that would strictly regulate NGOs and associations in the country, warning that its passage could cost Cambodia up to $700 million in development aid. ...

A coalition of Cambodian nongovernmental organizations will stage a peaceful protest on Monday outside parliament in the capital Phnom Penh to oppose proposed legislation that they say will restrict their activities, an official with a prominent domestic rights groups said. ...

Officials from the Ministry of Health’s national eye health program yesterday released a report announcing that trachoma, an eye infection that can lead to blindness, is no longer a public health problem in Cambodia. ...

The government yesterday confirmed four changes to the controversial NGO law in response to widespread criticism; opponents, however, say the edits are insignificant and the legislation remains a “severe violation” of Cambodia’s constitution. ...

The Ministry of Health has completed a draft law on alcohol regulation, which will set a minimum drinking age, increase taxes on alcohol and place other controls on the sale, consumption and advertising of alcohol. ...

After receiving numerous complaints about violence and robberies outside a nightclub in Battambang City, police Thursday rounded up 25 suspected criminals, claiming to have prevented an imminent gang brawl. ...

Social affairs officials met Thursday with the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to discuss the notorious Prey Speu social affairs center, with the government giving permission for the U.N. to visit the center Friday and identify residents who require psychiatric assistance ...

ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) today called on the Cambodian government to abandon its proposed Law on Associations and Non-governmental Organizations (LANGO), arguing that the ruling party has pursued a fundamentally undemocratic course in attempting to secure the passage of a law that threatens ...

A senior government official on Wednesday defended the controversial draft law to regulate NGOs, as members of the government and civil society met in Phnom Penh. ...

After abysmal conditions were exposed at the Por Sen Chey Social Affairs Center, City Hall admitted yesterday that the center was not equipped to detain and care for large numbers of people. ...

CPP lawmakers and officials continued to defend their controversial draft of a proposed law aiming to regulate the country’s non-government groups at a workshop at the National Assembly on Wednesday, despite a boycott from some NGOs and the opposition, which dismissed the event as “rubbish.” ...

About 100 homeless and mentally ill Cambodians who are being detained in a center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh implored an opposition lawmaker on Tuesday to request that the facility serve them better quality food and stop torture and other rights abuses. ...

Hundreds of opponents to a controversial law to regulate NGOs met in a hotel in Phnom Penh Tuesday, as a campaign against the passage of the legislation continues. Zach Lampell, a legal advisor at the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, told those gathered that he had ...

In the first semester of the year, the number of demonstration and riot up but crime down, said a report of the Phnom Penh Police Commissariat. During that period, there were 236 cases of demonstrations and riots, up 55 cases compared to the same period of ...

NGOs remained united Tuesday in their staunch opposition to a draft law that would force all non-government groups in the country to register with the state, but were split on whether to take up the ruling CPP on its offer for an 11th-hour consultation ahead ...

Beneath a tree in Phnom Penh’s remote Prey Speu Social Affairs Centre – a de facto prison used to indefinitely incarcerate some of the capital’s most vulnerable citizens – a woman yesterday chanted loudly before bursting into tears and then laughter. Like many others at the ...