Social development

The country’s draft $3.4 billion national budget for 2014 proposes yet another $920 million in new debt to make ends meet, the same amount taken on this year, according to a copy of the spending bill obtained Thursday. The draft budget calls for nearly $400 million—or ...

Environmentalists and NGOs are threatening to sue developers of a controversial hydropower dam, claiming the project would cause irreversible damage to the Mekong River. The Don Sahong dam, a 260-megawatt project proposed on a site less than two kilometres north of the Cambodian-Lao border, is expected ...

CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun on Wednesday lauded the economic and social benefits of the widespread clearing of Cambodia’s forests for development projects. Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly after a meeting with the Vietnamese Ambassador Ngo Anh Dzung, Mr. Vun, who is also the spokesman ...

The opposition party has called on microfinance institutions to renegotiate payment terms with flood-affected loan holders. This year’s floods have affected 20 provinces and more than 1.7 million people, with 31,314 households evacuated, according to the Humanitarian Response Forum. The Cambodia National Rescue Party has asked that ...

After repeatedly equivocating about whether it has lifted a 2011 freeze on new lending to Cambodia in response to the government’s forced evictions of families in Phnom Penh, the World Bank has said that the suspension is still firmly in place. “The World Bank has not ...

Cambodia has been the country regionally worst affected by bird flu in humans this year—with 23 cases compared to just two in Vietnam and none in Thailand—largely due to the difference in poultry farming, an official with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) is requesting that $15 million be allocated to Cambodia from a new $100 million grant to stop the spread of resistance to the best available drugs currently used to fight malaria. Eva Christophel, the WHO’s regional malaria adviser in Manila, said ...

Three families involved in a land dispute with a private company filed a complaint Monday at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court accusing the company’s owner, businessman Khun Sear, of waging an ongoing campaign of intimidation as he tries to force the families from their homes ...

A senior US State Department official visiting the kingdom said yesterday that any solution to the current political deadlock would have to come from within Cambodia and not from foreign powers. Scot Marciel, principle deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, ...

Civil servants living in Phnom Penh will have wages paid into Canadia Bank accounts starting this week, Moth Kiev, secretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs, said on Friday. The children of retired and disabled civil servants who have died will receive payments directly from ...

Some 50 representatives of Phnom Penh’s embattled Boeng Kak community on Monday marched to the offices of the European Union and World Bank to request that the international bodies send observers to the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of anti-eviction activist Yorm Bopha on November 22. Ms. ...

A two-year-old girl from northwestern Pursat province was confirmed positive for human H5N1 avian influenza after she was admitted to the Jayavarman VII Hospital in Siem Reap province on Oct. 25 with fever, running nose, lethargy, dyspnea, cough and breathing difficulties. She died on Oct.26. This ...

The total number of Cambodian children immunized in the nationwide campaign with measles and rubella vaccines has already reached one million, the Ministry of Health announced Tuesday. Health Minister Mam Bunheng launched the campaign against these two children’s diseases on Oct. 21, aiming to vaccinate all ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on a directive last week to trans­fer 11 government bodies, previously overseen by Cabinet Minister Sok An, to relevant ministries and institutions, further cutting the expansive portfolio of the deputy prime minister in the wake of July’s national election. ...

Seven Vietnamese nationals arrested during simultaneous raids on a pair of massage parlors in central Phnom Penh on Thursday night have been sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court for their role in the alleged trafficking of minors, police and a child-protection NGO said Sunday. “We ...

The National Assembly’s 12-member permanent committee will take its first look at the country’s $3.54 billion draft budget for 2014 on Monday, though officials are still refusing to offer a breakdown of how the money will be spent. The draft, which allocates more than $400 million ...

A Cambodian court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former politician who shot and wounded three garment workers in 2012 but has yet to serve any time behind bars in a case that has prompted outrage from rights groups. Judge Taing Sun Lay also ...

The Cambodian and Malaysian governments will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) within three months that will restart the business of sending Cambodian domestic workers to the country after a two-year moratorium, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. After meeting with representatives from the Malaysian Home ...

The government will likely sell a Japanese-style medical service to Cambodia in a package that includes an emergency care center, a medical graduate school and an insurance system. The government has decided to seek a market for the medical service in emerging nations in the Association ...

As protests against land grabbing have increased in Phnom Penh in the past five years, so too have violent crackdowns by the authorities. Police have been criticised for their treatment of protesters – which has included beatings with electric batons and kicks to the stomach of ...

Cambodia’s newly appointed minister of commerce said Thursday that he plans to reform the country’s economy ahead of Cambodia’s entrance into the Asean Economic Community (AEC) 2015, though he and other officials did not say how they plan to accomplish that goal. Speaking to reporters on ...

Cambodia is home to some 400,000 Cham Muslims. The ethnic group, like many others, suffered terrible losses during the Khmer Rouge regime. Lives were lost and cultural landmarks destroyed. Now, as mosques and heritage sites around the country are demolished to make way for more ...

It has been one year since Cambodia announced that it was lifting its ban on intercountry adoptions beginning January 1, 2013, but despite praising Cambodia’s efforts to implement international regulations, countries that ban adoptions of Cambodians said this week that they were no closer to ...

Herbalife Ltd, a global nutrition company whose business practices are being challenged in a US court and whose marketing strategies have been the subject of public criticism, will officially open a six-storey distribution centre in Phnom Penh today, according to the New York Stock Exchange-listed ...