Social development

Teng Khorn’s living room is under a tree, his bedroom in a boat hauled up on a slipway for caulking beside the mangroves that lead to his source of income: the sea. His choice of abode is also his act of defiance against the monolithic Chinese ...

Activists may find themselves in a showdown with police this morning during a planned vigil on Phnom Penh’s riverside and a march to several embassies. National Military Police spokesman Kheng Tito said yesterday that people supporting the release of 21 people detained during a garment strike ...

The fate of Khim Saphath, the 16-year-old boy missing since clashes between striking garment workers and security forces erupted on Veng Sreng Boulevard on January 3, continues to differentiate fatality lists compiled by rights groups. He was last seen lying on the ground with a bloody ...

In 1990, Pen Hoeurng was out in the field tending her cows and buffalo when the rattle of machine-gun fire erupted in the surrounding forest and she was struck by a bullet from an M-16. Ms. Hoeurng, now 48, does not know whether she was shot ...

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on freedom of assembly and association, Maina Kiai, on Friday wrapped up a three-day unofficial visit to Cambodia by paying a visit to the Boeng Kak community, the site of the country’s longest-running land dispute. Inside the home of high-profile Boeng ...

The National Blood Transfusion Center hopes to boost the Kingdom’s blood stocks by targetting youth donors at a second annual Valentine’s Day blood drive. This year’s February 14 campaign will target university students and youth aged 18 and older, who make up about 70 per ...

Some of the hundreds of families losing land and community forest to Vietnamese-owned rubber plantations in Cambodia’s northeast will this week file a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) over the investment it has made in the plantations’ parent company. Eang Vuthy, executive director of ...

Newly approved plans by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to fix mistakes it made on a $143 million railway project appear to water down recommendations proposed by the Bank’s own review panel, and could impose the costs of the plan on the very families who ...

A golden urn police maintain was the one stolen from Oudong mountain in December – sparking a furore and police investigation – was taken to the Royal Palace on Friday, police have said. Deputy Prime Minister Kong Sam Ol on Friday transported the relics – said ...

In the weeks that 17-year-old garment worker Yon Chea languished in prison, he spent hours staring out of the window at a concrete wall, certain that he would never see his home or his family again. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday morning granted ...

Police arrested 11 Cambodian people while they were trying to illegally cross the border to work in Thailand. Thousands of Cambodian people reportedly crossed the border illegally to find jobs and cut down trees in Thailand every year, prompting the Thai soldiers to open fire ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday morning granted bail to two of the 23 union activists and protesters jailed following the lethal suppression of garment worker strikes by military police on January 3. Municipal court presiding Judge Leang Samnatt held an unscheduled hearing on Friday ...

About 200 villagers locked in a land dispute with the Chinese-owned Union Development Group (UDG) in Koh Kong province said they were warned on Friday that “paratroopers” would be brought in if they continued to block a road to the company’s headquarters in Botum Sakor ...

The Government already issued a Decision to require the employers to increase the minimum wage for the factory workers to USD 100 per month, starting from February 2014, said a government official. Vong Savann, a senior official of the Labor Ministry added that the Decision was ...

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom today deplored the killing of Cambodian journalist Suon Chan and called for those responsible for the killing to be brought to justice. A group of men wielding stones and bamboo sticks attacked Mr. ...

In a rare admission, the Asian Development Bank has surprisingly acknowledged its own shortcomings following a controversial railway rehabilitation project in Cambodia that sparked complaints from thousands of displaced local residents affected by forced resettlements, insufficient compensations and neglect of their human rights. The concerns were confirmed by the Compliance ...

“What law? No one has ever come to speak to me about that,” said 33-year-old Lim Vannak, scanning the large plastic buckets of corrosive acids she had lined up on the pavement of Phnom Penh’s Street 144 on a recent morning. Acid in the wrong hands ...

Richard Rogers, the lawyer retained by the opposition CNRP to potentially submit a case against Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government with the International Criminal Court at The Hague, said Thursday that letters were hand-delivered to two military police chiefs requesting information about the fatal shooting ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday fined a 29-year-old hairstylist and make-up artist 2 million riel, or about $500, and ordered her to pay 5 million riel, or about $1,250, in compensation to a rival beauty parlor owner she defamed on Facebook. The sentence is ...

Two suppliers of mosquito nets to Cambodia found to have bribed officials to gain contracts under the Global Fund’s health grant scheme have had their contracts renewed. The two firms, Sumitomo Chemical and Vestergaard Frandsen, were found by the fund’s Office of the Inspector General in ...

Trash collectors were working overtime Thursday to clean the vast piles of garbage that had accumulated in Phnom Penh this week after their four-day strike for higher wages. Although workers returned to their duties after agreeing to a pay rise of between $20 and $25 per ...

In May of 2010, just four days after their family was resettled in Battambang province, two children, accompanied by their sister-in-law, walked to a pond. Stories differ as to why they were there. Rights groups say they went to bathe and collect water. Police claim ...

About 140 villagers in Koh Kong province set up a roadblock for the second consecutive day Thursday, demanding compensation from a Chinese company they say burned down their homes to make way for part of a multibillion-dollar tourist resort, according to a rights worker and ...

A commune police officer has been summonsed to appear at Ratanakkiri’s provincial court on Friday after 10 villagers filed lawsuits against him in September for his alleged involvement in illegal logging in a community forest and for threatening them with a rifle, villagers and the ...