Social development

Phnom Penh Municipal Court has reopened an investigation into the high-profile slaying of union leader Chea Vichea in 2004, a court official said yesterday. Prosecutor Sok Roeun said the court’s head prosecutor began reinvestigating the case early last month in response to an order from the ...

More than 100 representatives of Mekong River Commission (MRC) member countries, development partners, international NGOs, and Lao and foreign media yesterday visited the site of the planned Don Sahong hydropower project. The two-day site visit provided an opportunity for participants to learn from experts how fish ...

Cambodia’s garment sector has the highest rate of unionization of any industry in Asia, Cambodia Federation of Employers and Business Associations Van Sou Leng said Tuesday. “Major efforts are needed to improve the quality of workplace relations,” Van said in a statement posted on the Camfeba ...

Some 200 ethnic Kuoy minority villagers in Preah Vihear’s Chheb district blocked tractors belonging to a Chinese company from bulldozing their rice crops yesterday, the same day that district authorities received a letter from the Interior Ministry instructing them to broker an agreement between villagers ...

Cambodia may soon have new standardised exams to hold its students, teachers and education system accountable. “Everyone agrees that the improved enrolment rates in primary school is an accomplishment; at the same time, everyone also calls for quality-control improvement [which] means better testing,” said Jan ...

France’s Institut Pasteur du Cambodge on Tuesday inaugurated a new facility here for a regional research platform in Asia, focusing its research on infectious diseases in the region. Cambodian Health Minister Mam Bunheng, Vincent Deubel, director of the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge, and French Nobel Prize ...

Two civil society organisations are calling on Prime Minister Hun Sen to publish three long-gestating draft laws on judicial reform to allow ample time for “genuine, inclusive and meaningful participation in the drafting process”. Hun Sen said in a speech last Wednesday that the three laws ...

Thirteen families in Phnom Penh’s O’andoung village, who have been locked in a long-running dispute with tycoon Sok Kong’s Sokimex company, say their land is being flooded with sand as they wait for a response to a complaint filed with Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier ...

Journalists need to be more professional in their reporting, which is the best way to protect themselves, a media educator says. “Like any other profession, journalism can be risky, but if journalists follow their professional codes of conduct and ethics and work with responsibility, there should ...

Hundreds of trucks hauling sugarcane queue up along the dusty roads that cut a path through a plantation in Kampong Speu province. Their destination: Cambodia’s most advanced sugar refinery. Its owners say the landmark project, run by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company and its president, ruling ...

Freedom Park was placed under lockdown and a march by land rights activists was blocked Saturday morning as Phnom Penh’s security officials were out in force to ensure that peaceful rallies on International Women’s Day could not go as planned. Prime Minister Hun Sen on February ...

The International Labor Organization said it would launch on Wednesday two reports outlining ways to improve the investment climate in Cambodia. The first report, by the ILO, analyses Cambodia’s performance in 17 areas and contains a national survey of workers and employers. Key areas include ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has summoned 10 witnesses, including several police officials and one reporter, as it begins investigating the brutal murder of Nguyen Vann Chean, an ethnic Vietnamese man who was beaten to death by an angry mob in Meanchey district last month. The ...

Two more new human cases of avian influenza H5N1 have been confirmed in Cambodia, and one of them, an 11-year-old boy died on Friday in Phnom Penh’s Kantha Bopha Children Hospital, a hospital representative confirmed Monday. “An 11-year-old boy from Kampong Chhnang province was admitted to ...

Families still waiting for promised land titles in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood said Sunday that the municipal government is offering to give them their long-awaited tenure rights only if they agree to give up part of their land. About 100 Boeng Kak families were left ...

In the latest bid to protect Mondulkiri’s ravaged forests, World Wildlife Fund is rolling out a new project designed to give locals financial incentives to help preserve Mondulkiri Protected Forest and Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary. Cultivating small-scale, community-run businesses such as resin tree tapping and beekeeping ...

About 1,000 Cambodian women died from cervical cancer every year, said Hun Many, president of Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia. Speaking Saturday at a news conference on anti cervical cancer campaign, Many, son of Prime Minister Hun Sen, said the death rate of cervical ...

Hundreds of opposition-aligned trade union activists and workers terminated their outlawed rally on Saturday after heavy security forces had been deployed in and around the capital’s Freedom Park to prevent them from entering the Park to hold a forum on the International Women’s Day. “Those activists ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Friday warned that a union-led public forum scheduled for Freedom Park on Saturday morning would not be allowed to proceed, adding that a fresh wave of union marches next week are also banned. The security minister’s comments came during a talk ...

As International Women’s Day is marked around the world on Saturday, calls are being made for more rehabilitative opportunities to be made available to female prisoners in Cambodia and, separately, for cultural norms that rank women below men to be challenged and overcome. Local rights group ...

Cambodia has provided examples of “best practices” in the fight against human trafficking for a forthcoming Asean convention against the trafficking of people, experts said Friday at the close of a two-day conference in Phnom Penh on irregular migration and human trafficking. The Asean region is ...

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are among the world’s top ten performers in reducing the proportion of children out of school, according to a recent UNESCO report. The report, released in January and launched in Phnom Penh on Thursday, also showed that Thailand was among the world’s ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Police held a special training at the capital’s Olympic Stadium on Thursday afternoon in preparation for any future demonstrations. More than 2,000 policemen, armed with shields and batons, joined the half-day training, Gen. Chuon Sovann, chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police, ...

The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) says it has prepared a “briefing paper” ahead of a European Union meeting with Cambodia in Brussels next week. In a statement late Thursday, the Paris-based group said the paper “documents the deteriorating situation in Cambodia and make(s) recommendations ...