Social development

Cambodia has made some progress in improving its education system in line with its 2015 UN Millennium Goals, but dropout rates remain high, due to endemic poverty and corruption. Universal literacy and 9th-grade education were the second-highest goal in the development plan, whose progress Cambodia will ...

The Education Ministry will conduct random and unannounced inspections of schools across the country, targeting “low-hanging fruit” in its ongoing bid to clean up the education system, the minister said Tuesday. ...

Despite a 72 percent increase in the number of drug-related arrests last year compared to 2013, 50 percent less drugs were seized during the same period, an official from the National Authority for Combating Drugs’ (NACD) said Tuesday. ...

Female members of the National Assembly sat down with a representative of the UK Parliament yesterday to discuss female participation in politics, on the final day of a consultative meeting hosted by the British Embassy. ...

The Cambodian Independent Teachers Association (CITA) demanded in a letter sent on Monday to the Ministry of Education that all Cambodian secondary schools be paid their full yearly program budget after complaints were lodged by some teachers that the funds had not yet been received. ...

Police in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday burned down more than 130 shelters belonging to a community of ethnic Bunong families in Keo Seima district that authorities accuse of squatting on a Vietnam­ese rubber plantation, a local official said. ...

Marking the sixth annual International Transgender Day of Visibility yesterday, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) called on the government to protect transgender people and end discrimination. ...

Approximately 200 lawmakers, educators and civil society and development partner representatives met here on Tuesday to discuss reform measures to improve educational system in Cambodia. Hang Chuon Naron said Cambodia now has more than 7,000 primary schools with about 2 million students, 5,750 secondary schools ...

A US delegation led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House minority leader, wrapped up two days of meetings in Cambodia on Tuesday, having met with Prime Minister Hun Sen and key rights and democracy workers. ...

Cambodia is not meeting many of its UN Millennium Development Goals, which are coming due this year, but it has made progress in the reduction of infant mortality. Currently, 28 of 1,000 children born in Cambodia die before reaching the age of one. That number is ...

A US delegation led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House minority leader, wrapped up two days of meetings in Cambodia on Tuesday, having met with Prime Minister Hun Sen and key rights and democracy workers. ...

Incensed by the prime minister’s assertion last week that the “same faces” always show up at protests, a group of Phnom Penh’s most prominent anti-eviction activists picketed City Hall on Monday to vent their anger. ...

Health experts have thrown their weight behind a provision in the draft tobacco-control law that will require graphic health warnings to cover half the face of Cambodia’s cigarette packages. According to article 10 of the law – first drafted in 2003 – the images must ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday met with a visiting delegation of U.S. Congress members, including House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a government spokesman said. ...

Ethnic minority villagers who live in the planned reservoir zone of the Lower Sesan II hydropower project along the Sesan and Srepok rivers have said they will not move from their homes unless the dam company and authorities pay for the removal of their ancestors’ ...

Thirty-six villagers remained hospitalized Monday afternoon after about 800 fell ill on Saturday from eating tainted sandwiches distributed at a World Vision event in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kreng district, officials said. ...

Only one third of all Khmer adults 18 and older are single. Most of those are in the age group between 18 and 25. By the ages between 26 and 35 however, four out of five Cambodians are married. ...

The World Health Organization has declared Cambodia measles-free, having not registered a confirmed case in over three years, marking a success in combating what was once the country’s most deadly communicable disease. ...

The husband of a woman attacked with acid at a market in Takeo province in November plans to file complaints Monday with the Supreme Council of the Magistracy and the Anti-Corruption Unit, claiming local court officials are to blame for a lack of action in ...

As anticipated, the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday approved U.K. professor Rhona Smith as the new special rapporteur to Cambodia on human rights, replacing Surya Subedi, whose six-year term ends this month. ...

Approximately 570 Cambodian people, mostly children, in northwestern Cambodia’s Siem Reap province got sick after eating bread filled with meat and vegetables on Saturday afternoon, a provincial health chief confirmed. ...

A Turkish man was sentenced to nine years in jail Friday for purchasing the virginity of two 14-year-old girls in Phnom Penh last year. ...

The U.N. was due to appoint its new human rights envoy to Cambodia on Friday night at the 28th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, with British academic Rhona Smith expected to be selected from a three-person shortlist. ...

Commerce Minister Sun Chan­thol evoked the late U.S. President John Kennedy on Friday at a seminar about “rebranding” Cambodia that quickly turned into a promotional event for Coca-Cola. ...