Social development

Medical students who vowed on Sunday to boycott the first government-ordered national exams under claims of discrimination backtracked on their threats yesterday. Da Nhel, 27, a representative of the student doctors, said that just hours after threatening to boycott the exams, which were approved by the ...

Union leaders say they expect upwards of 1,000 people to jam the streets around Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday in a show of support for 23 unionists, workers and bystanders who are on trial for their alleged part in violent protests in Pur Senchey ...

The United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of assembly has called the Cambodian authorities’ continuous blockade of Freedom Park, the enforcement of which saw security guards attack journalists and supporters of opposition lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua on Monday, “deeply disturbing”. “The authorities have no legal basis for ...

Recent arrests by Thai authorities of groups of suspected Uighur refugees along the Cambodian border have experts convinced that Cambodia has once again become a transit hub for members of the minority group fleeing religious and political persecution in China. Last week, 14 Uighurs were reportedly ...

The long-awaited trial of the 23 men arrested during strike demonstrations in early January began this morning at 8 am at Phnom Penh Municipal Court and is proceeding into the afternoon. Before the trial began, police had already blocked off the street in front of the ...

Cambodia on Thursday commenced its annual campaign to fight against dengue fever as the rainy season is approaching. Approximately 700 health officials, health-related non- governmental organization representatives, teachers and students gathered here to launch the campaign. Speaking at the event, Health Minister Mam Bunheng appealed to all ...

Residents of property development site, Boeung Kok, on Thursday gathered in front of an office of World Bank in Phnom Penh in order to present petition to the World Bank. They were seeking intervention from the World Bank to help solve years-long land dispute in their ...

Garment factory owners failed to turn up for what was supposed to have been a tripartite meeting with the government and worker unions on Thursday to help break an impasse in negotiations to increase the minimum wage for workers, officials said. The International Labor Organization (ILO) ...

The genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda were both aided by local media and propaganda, and the role of foreign media covering them is often criticized as insufficient. In interviews with VOA Khmer, media experts said more funding of that sector could help prevent such errors ...

The appointment of General Sok Phal to head the Interior Ministry’s newly formed department to monitor migrant workers has raised concerns over his close familial connection to a labor recruitment industry fraught with human rights abuses. Gen. Phal’s sister, Ung Seang Rithy, is the owner of ...

Hand, foot and mouth disease ( HFMD), which is caused by enterovirus 71 (EV-71), has reappeared in Cambodia and recently killed a boy and sickened seven other children, a local Kampuchea Thmey Daily newspaper reported Wednesday.   Dr. Ly Sovann, chief of the Health Ministry’s Communicable Disease ...

Cambodia’s tax department is under-resourced and understaffed, thereby hindering its ability to generate revenue, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) analysis released earlier this month. The analysis, which took into account survey results from 22 tax revenue bodies across Asia between 2012 and 2013, paints ...

Twenty-one labor activists who have been detained in Kampong Cham province since their arrests in January were moved to the main prison outside Phnom Penh on Wednesday. Supporters say the 21 are being detained as a lesson to other would-be demonstrators, after a brutal crackdown ...

Officials with the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday spoke out for the first time against Australia’s plans to send some of the asylum seekers trying to reach its shores to Cambodia, saying the pending deal was not a “real ...

Members of a Lao ethnic community in Ratanakkiri province allegedly burned down three makeshift houses belonging to a rubber plantation on Monday. The 250 villagers in Veun Sai district’s Hatpak village accuse Indian-owned SK Company of encroaching on the forest and ignoring markers demarcating village farmland, ...

Before this past September, Nov Borom, a 52-year-old mother of five, lived with both a tenuous housing situation and HIV. But through a collaboration of several NGOs who sought to provide Cambodia’s most vulnerable people with housing able to withstand the region’s rainy season and floods, ...

About 80 villagers calling for the release of two former Khmer Rouge soldiers allegedly arrested for illegally occupying land in Malai district rallied outside Banteay Meanchey Provincial Hall, locals and rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Community representatives Ly Khley and Hoeun Vy were detained on Tuesday ...

The Asian Development Bank announced Wednesday that it will provide $81.7 million, including a $6.7 million grant from Australia, in additional financing to help Cambodia recover from catastrophic floods in late 2013. The flooding affected 1.7 million people and caused an estimated $356 million in damage. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday ordered embattled union leader Ath Thorn to stay away from the SL garment factory and its workers and to avoid any public gatherings that could “damage public order,” drawing a tight circle around one of the country’s most ...

Two villagers in Kampong Chhnang province’s Kampong Trolach district have fled their homes for safety reasons after getting an alarming summons from police in response to their refusal to accept relocation money from KDC International Company, which has been feuding with locals over land for ...

Exactly who will participate in a workshop to set the minimum wage in the garment sector with the Ministry of Labour this week remained unclear yesterday, with some key figures saying they had not yet been invited. During the workshop, to be held on Thursday and ...

A deputy district governor and a land tycoon are allegedly attempting to seize land deemed sacred by about 700 monks and residents who gathered yesterday in protest outside the unfinished Wat Kohbodhivong in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district. Banner-wielding participants said that tycoon Chheang Paksour and ...

Nearly 500 women were tested this month in a screening drive at Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital for human papillomavirus (HPV), two strains of which are known to cause cervical cancer, but the free Pap smear was advertised as being available only to married women. Hav Monirath, ...

Unrest in the garment sector spread yesterday, as hundreds of workers from Kandal province demonstrated outside their factory. The 700 workers at Unity Fashion factory walked off the job after managers said they would dock wages of workers who did not show up on April 17, ...