Social development

Luxury cars and fancy homes are among the lavish gifts Cambodia’s political and business elite shower each other with on special occasions but there are hints the government is moving to curb such excesses. Patronage has long been a problem in impoverished Cambodia, with bribery ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday sang the praises of Cambodia’s first gold medallist in 44 years – suggesting Sorn Seavmey’s achievement was the “only thing Cambodia can brag about” – as the Kingdom’s Olympic Committee warned of bogus Facebook accounts in her name soliciting money. After ...

More than 68,000 grade 12 students have signed up for a second and final shot at the high stakes national exam next Monday, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport reported. That’s all of the students who failed – and most who failed to show ...

At least six labor unions to be led by Pav Sina, president of the Collective Union of Movement of Workers, will hold public forum at the Freedom Park on October 12 to discuss minimum wage demand for footwear and garment workers. A plan to hold the ...

NGOs have filed a new complaint against Australia’s ANZ Bank claiming it owes compensation to 681 Cambodian families who say their farms were illegally grabbed by a sugarcane plantation the bank helped to finance. ...

As the World Bank considers supplying fresh loans to Cambodia, a new study uses the country as exhibit A for how the financier effectively sponsors corporate land grabs at the expense of the rural poor it purportedly helps. Three years ago, the bank’s own inspectors found ...

Cambodia’s Ministries of Labour and Tourism on Wednesday jointly launched a new regulation for protecting the occupational safety, health and labour rights of entertainment workers. “The regulation aims to improve working conditions, occupational safety and health rules of entertainment service enterprises, establishments and companies,”said a ...

A British lawyer has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate “widespread and systematic” land grabbing in Cambodia over the past 14 years as a crime against humanity. The complaint filed in The Hague yesterday by lawyer Richard Rogers, who is officially representing 10 Cambodian victims, ...

Cambodia launched its first full-scale public neuroscience centre at Calmette Hospital in the capital yesterday. The $10.8 million, 90-bed Centre De Neurosciences – complete with a neurosurgical ward and research unit – will seek to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. ...

A ruling party politician has pledged to not only resolve a raft of land disputes, but push a policy of “on-site development” – redevelopment that does not remove people from their communities – over mass relocations. Speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 outside the National ...

Workers in Cambodia’s capital earning less than $120 per month are living below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning’s own calculation. At a September 17 workshop on the garment industry minimum wage, International Labor Organization Cambodia national director Tun Sophorn cited Ministry of ...

Fuelled by poverty and debt, more than a quarter of Cambodian adults migrate, and, in the process, many are leaving behind their children, a new report finds. Part of a four-year research project on child labour, the Cambodian Independent Research Institute’s The Impacts of Adult Migration ...

Vietnamese nationals were deported en masse this week from Svay Rieng province, with 142 illegal migrants sent back across the border in a single day, as Cambodia’s nationwide census of foreigners continues, officials said yesterday. General Sok Phal, director of the Interior Ministry’s Immigration Department, said ...

City Hall has banned street marches for World Teachers’ Day and World Housing Rights Day, ordering participants to confine their activities to Freedom Park instead. World Teachers’ Day and World Housing Rights Day occur on October 5 and 6, respectively. Planners for both expressed disappointment ...

Approximately 3,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Cambodia die per year, Ieng Mouly, chairman of the National AIDS Authority, said Thursday. According to the official, the Global Fund has granted nearly 149 million U.S. dollars to Cambodia for a four-and-a-half years fight against the disease. ...

Shortly after a speech in New York by US President Barack Obama, in which he applauded the efforts of human rights defenders, Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong says his country is making progress. Obama acknowledged the work of two Cambodian rights activist during a speech at ...

Over 85 per cent of child domestic workers in Phnom Penh are injured in the course of their employment, research into child labour released yesterday revealed. The Cambodian Development Research Institute and World Vision International are jointly examining child labour practices in the Kingdom, and the ...

Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong addressed the UN’s General Assembly on Monday, in a speech that focused more on the threat of the Islamic State and international conflicts than it did on Cambodian issues. Hor Namhong told the Assembly that Cambodia supports joint international efforts to ...

Cambodia on Tuesday defended its plan to build the 108-megawatt Chhay Areng River hydropower plant in a jungle in southwestern Koh Kong province, saying the project would greatly contribute to developing the energy sector. “An initial study found that the project has a capacity of 108 ...

The construction of Koh Kong’s Cheay Areng hydrowpower dam will cost USD 400 million and be completed by 2020, said Energy Secretary of State Ith Prang Tuesday. Speaking at a press conference, he said the study of the dam and its impact on environment has been ...

With the spectre of potential garment-sector unrest on the horizon and emboldened communities protesting land disputes, the National Police is buying what appear to be the authorities’ first water-cannon trucks designed specifically to control demonstrations. In advertisements in yesterday’s Post and Post Khmer newspapers, the ...

Foreign minister Julie Bishop announced that an additional $40 million in development assistance was given to Cambodia. The amount shall boost Cambodia’s effort to provide humanitarian aid to those who are in need of protection as part of the Refugees Convention and a member of ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday that the country will take in refugees from Australia on a voluntary basis, stressing that accepting asylum seekers is part of an international obligation for Cambodia. Hun Sen said a Cambodian working group will interview those refugees ...

A new study indicated that 43. 2 percent of Cambodian garment workers suffered from anemia and 15. 7 percent of workers are underweight, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Monday. The study also found that garment workers spent approximately 1. 3 U.S. dollars per day on ...