Social development

International labour organisations Industrial Global Union, UNI Global Union and ITUC are seeking international support for a day of action in support of garment workers arrested during recent strikes in Cambodia. The groups are calling on people to demonstrate outside Cambodian embassies and deliver protest letters ...

A group of Cambodian-Americans plans to file a criminal complaint at the International Criminal Court against Prime Minister Hun Sen and senior officials, accusing them of human rights violations and obstructing justice for the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The complaint will be submitted to the ...

In a new report highlighting abuse in Cambodia’s garment industry, Human Rights Watch has called on the Cambodian government to cease “intimidation and threats” against workers. The group interviewed nearly 200 factory workers from 55 different factories, and found that anti-union discrimination and poor workers conditions ...

After reporting 26 human H5N1 avian influenza cases in 2013, by far the most of any country, the Kingdom of Cambodia has announced their first case of the lethal bird flu on 2014, according to a Ministry of Health press release Feb. 4.   The case is a 5-year-old ...

The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The ...

Piles of waste stinking up Siem Reap’s Chreav commune are causing serious health problems and making the area unlivable, according to local residents. The site in Knar village, which is run by refuse company Global Action for Environment Awareness (GAEA), is plagued with flies and a ...

Two years after Cambodia’s Acid Law took effect, and one year after a subsequent sub-decree further regulated the dangerous substance, significant hurdles remain in securing justice for victims of acid attacks, according to a paper published in the Cambodian Law and Policy Journalon Sunday. In her paper, ...

Though the Ministry of Information has repeatedly rejected independent radio station owner Mam Sonando’s requests to obtain a television station license and a radio relay station, saying that there was “no space” for him, the government has approved at least three new TV licenses and ...

At 10 a.m. on January 3, about 2,000 members of the security forces, mostly military police, advanced down Phnom Penh’s factory-lined Veng Sreng Street, spraying AK-47 assault rifle fire into a crowd of about 100 protesters who had been throwing stones and crude Molotov cocktails. ...

Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee, came under fire Monday from activists who accused him of lying to the U.N. in Geneva regarding land issues and the displacement of affected people. The criticism of Mr. Sambath’s report to the U.N.’s Human Rights ...

Opposition CNRP leader Sam Rainsy is to meet with Cambodian migrant workers during a two-day trip to South Korea later this week, at the end of a European tour that has included stops in Geneva, Brussels and Paris. “He will be visiting [South] Korea to meet ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has for the first time admitted to major flaws in its efforts to protect the roughly 4,000 families losing land to a $143 million project it is funding to rehabilitate Cambodia’s dilapidated railway system. On Friday, the ADB said it would ...

The U.N.’s General Assembly released its latest round of recommendations to improve the human rights situation in Cambodia on Thursday following a review held last week in Geneva. The statements made by delegations from 76 countries during the review urged Cambodia to fulfill its promise to ...

About 100 monks, activists and workers returned on Saturday evening to the Canadia Industrial Park, where garment workers clashed with military police on January 3, to pray for the five protesters who were shot dead in the violence and call for the release of 23 ...

Opposition party members will lead a delegation to the doors of Kampong Cham Correctional Centre 3 on Tuesday in the hope of visiting the 23 people imprisoned there following a violent crackdown on striking garment workers in early January. Despite having previously been denied access to ...

A call for the Cambodian government to lift its controversial ban on public assembly is among 34 such recommendations it has chosen to defer in the wake of last week’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights situation. The UN on Saturday released a ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc, claiming their village chief has threatened them with arrest over a petition accusing officials of illegally logging a community forest. Sven Vev, 40, said he and three other representatives of the ethnic Tumpoun ...

Market vendors hawking pirated government textbooks have a month to get their shops in order if they want to avoid an authority-led crackdown, a statement released on Friday by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport warns. Selling or buying textbooks labelled “not for sale” or ...

The opposition party’s planned complaint to the International Criminal Court against government officials for long-term rights abuses will likely be beaten to the punch by a US lawyer and rights activist, Voice of America reported on Friday. According to VOA, Morton Sklar, executive director of the ...

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent US agency that oversees government-sponsored stations Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, has hit back after the Cambodian government accused the broadcasters of being tools of the opposition. In a statement released Thursday, BBG chair Jeffrey Shell rejected ...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association will arrive in Cambodia on February 5, his office announced on Friday. ...

The Ministry of Health has moved to calm public fears over the safety of the measles and rubella (MR) vaccine, which was administered to 4.5 million Cambodian children in the last three months of 2013, as rumors circulate that it poses sinister health risks, according ...

The opposition CNRP’s deputy public affairs director, Kem Monovithya, posted a statement to her official Facebook account on Saturday distancing the party from Thy Sovantha, a 19-year-old opposition activist with a large social media following, announcing that Ms. Sovantha was “not involved” with the CNRP. Last ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen asked Britain to help Cambodia on human resource development. Hun Sen and Hugo Swire, British Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs, had a meeting Friday at the Peace Palace. ...