Social development

Local NGOs are urging the new National Assembly to pass term limits for the prime minister, to prevent a “dictatorship” in Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled Cambodia in some capacity for 30 years, but following discussions in Phnom Penh, rights groups and development NGOs ...

A spokesman for the Cambodian Parliament on Wednesday strongly denied that the country’s Parliament chief Heng Samrin has promised Vietnam to take strict measures to punish ethnic Khmer Krom activists who had held protests against a Vietnamese diplomat. The denial came after Vietnamese media reported Monday ...

About 3,000 garment workers went on strike in Kompong Chhnang province for a second day Tuesday, accusing their factory of withholding some of their monthly bonuses. Employees from the Chinese-owned Jiun Ye Garment factory blocked National Road 5 for more than four hours Tuesday, claiming that ...

The number of people charged in land disputes across the country so far this year has already surpassed the number of charges in all of 2013 in what rights group Adhoc on Tuesday called an “alarming” increase in legal action against those wrapped up in ...

More than 200 villagers from Siem Reap City blocked two trucks from passing their village on Monday in protest of the damage the trucks are causing to the community, allowing them to pass only when the company promised to help take care of the road. ...

The National Assembly yesterday agreed to forward to the Ministry of Interior a request from five Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmakers to visit the five Lorpeang villagers jailed over their involvement in their ongoing land dispute with KDC International. ...

A prominent rights group on Monday wrote to Minister of Interior Sar Kheng, calling on him to remind ministries and local authorities that demonstrators do not require their permission to hold public gatherings. ...

suspend protests against Vietnam over a territorial dispute as Phnom Penh expressed “regret” to Hanoi over the burning of a Vietnamese flag during the demonstrations last week. Horn Nam Hong met at his office with the head of the Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation, Thach Setha, who agreed ...

As a child growing up in a poor family in Banteay Meanchey, Yang Leaphea struggled to imagine a world outside her province. She turned to her desperately under-resourced local library, but found few books there to expand her horizons. All that changed when the intelligent daughter ...

At least 10 people, one a 4-year-old child, were injured in a clash in the capital yesterday when security forces used electric batons to disperse about 300 villagers from Kratie province embroiled in a land dispute with a South Korean agribusiness. The villagers, from Kratie’s Snuol ...

Hundreds of housing rights protesters and evictees clashed with security forces outside Phnom Penh on Monday, leaving at least nine people with minor injuries. The clash was one of the first since major violence over Freedom Park in the capital in July. Protesters gathered outside the National ...

Australia has reportedly installed a key immigration bureaucrat in its Phnom Penh embassy as the government prepares to send up to 1000 asylum seekers in its care on Nauru to Cambodia. Greg Kelly, who formerly headed the detention operations division of the Immigration Department and managed ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday that an estimated 30 percent of the 93,456 applicants passed their high school graduation exam early this month because the country took strict measures to enhance the quality of education sector. ...

Hundreds of Cambodian workers warned on Monday to hold bigger and longer protest at Poipet-Kloeng Loek crossing border if Thai military doesn’t release 16 Cambodian cart workers today. According to the workers, Thai authority issued a new rule to restrict Cambodian cart workers not to allow ...

Cambodian Consulate in Thailand’s Sakaeo province is seeking a defense lawyer to seek bail for 16 Cambodian workers arrested by Thai military. ...

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party plans to launch an investigation into organ trafficking in Cambodia following the mysterious case of an alleged kidney ring operating out of a military hospital in Phnom Penh. Mu Sochua, a CNRP lawmaker and head of the newly formed National ...

Phnom Penh security forces on Sunday blocked activists from riding their bicycles around the city to promote their campaign against the pending construction of a hydropower dam in Koh Kong province, claiming the organizers failed to ask City Hall for permission. The NGO Mother Nature has ...

Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison has been buying truckloads of water for inmates since a road construction crew broke the water pipe leading to the jail last week, officials said Sunday. ...

The Ministry of Education announced that high school students who failed the national exam will get their second chance to pass the test on October 13 and 14 following a decision by Prime Minister Hun Sen to hold a re-sit of the exam amid reports ...

The start of the school year has been delayed for a month due to flooding that has affected many of the country’s schools this month, the Ministry of Education said Sunday. Ros Salin, spokesman and cabinet chief for the ministry, said that the school year will ...

About 300 disgruntled Cambodian workers and used-garment merchants last night ended their blockade on the border with Thailand. The workers had earlier parked their two-wheel carts in front of the Aranyaprathet-Poi Pet border checkpoint on the Poi Pet side of the Thai-Cambodian friendship bridge. They demanded ...

The families of three Cambodian workers killed after a six-storey condominium building collapsed at a construction site just north of Bangkok earlier this week have been paid compensation. ...

About 100 villagers who lost land to a sugarcane plantation, which was until recently financed by ANZ Royal Bank, traveled to Phnom Penh to protest in front of the bank’s headquarters Thursday, but failed to convince the bank to help them. Several hundred families in Kompong ...

The two top officials in what was first reported as a kidney-trafficking ring based out of a military hospital, then later dismissed as a “training program”, have returned to work, a doctor employed there said. Lieutenant General Ly Sovan, 54-year-old director of Preah Ket Mealea hospital, ...