Social development

A group of 12 ethnic minority villagers in Ratanakkiri province have filed a complaint with the provincial court over what they claim is collusion between other villagers and local authorities to illegally log luxury timber from 193 hectares of land inside a community forest. The Prov ...

A Thai-owned sugar company has threatened legal action against a newspaper that ran a story and video depicting the use of child labour at its Koh Kong province plantation, but advocates on the ground there say the children are indeed used as employees. The Bangkok Post yesterday reported ...

Twenty-five out of the 123 lawmakers elected during the July 28 national election are female, the official election results have shown. Sunday. The figures indicated that the number of women-lawmakers in the upcoming fifth legislature of the National Assembly is lower than that of the previous ...

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced on Thursday that there has been a strange increase in the number of cases of paratyphoid A fever from travelers returning from Cambodia. Since March 2013, there have been 34 cases of paratyphoid A fever reported from ...

A 15-month-old toddler who represented the 18th confirmed case of avian influenza in Cambodia this year has recovered and was released from Kantha Bopha hospital on Friday. The little boy from Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district developed a fever on August 16, and was transferred a ...

Despite being one of the earliest proponents of the U.N.-sponsored Convention on Cluster Munitions, Cambodia was still not ready to sign on, an official said on the eve of the fourth annual meeting of state parties to the treaty in Zambia. Heng Ratana, director-general of the ...

One year ago today, Hang Serei Odom, a journalist in Ratanakkiri province, received a fateful phone call. After telling his wife he was going to meet a military police officer, he bid her goodnight. He left his house in Banlung City at about 7 p.m. ...

When the ruling CPP takes its seats in the new National Assembly, its members of Parliament will include a few new faces, and significantly less old ones, according to ratified election results announced by the National Election Committee (NEC) on Sunday. The CPP’s poor showing in ...

The following is the full text of an Executive Summary of the White Paper on the 2013 General Election for the National Assembly issued by the National Election Committee on Thursday: On 28 July 2013, the general election for the 5th mandate of Cambodia’s National Assembly ...

Phnom Penh Municipal Hall yesterday defended the actions of police and security guards who blocked protesters as they tried to leave the capital’s Boeung Kak area before they stopped and searched an NGO’s vehicle. Dozens of Daun Penh district police, security guards and military police blockaded ...

The gap between Cambodia’s health rich and health poor is “devastating”, according to a report by World Vision issued yesterday. Cambodia is ranked 124 out of 176 countries on the global index based on four indicators used to measure the gap in each listed country: life ...

A 15-month-old boy in the capital’s Russei Keo district has been diagnosed with H5N1 virus, bringing the number of the cases to 18 so far this year, a joint statement by the World Health Organization and Cambodian Health Ministry said Wednesday. The latest death case ...

Cambodia’s highest monks have called on the clergy to refrain from joining any political demonstrations, calling it an abuse of morals and professional ethics. In a statement issued on Sunday and obtained yesterday, the three top Buddhist leaders liken joining protests to the act of killing. “An ...

Authorities in Cambodia have imposed unusual travel restrictions in a southeastern province ahead of a planned opposition mass protest against election results this weekend, residents and non-governmental groups said Tuesday, criticizing the move as a violation of freedom of movement. Some of them suspect that the ...

The Cambodian government’s plan to build 20 dams along the Mekong River, with a view to boosting energy security, could harm food security and biodiversity in the region, as well as ignite a regional conflict over sharing of the river’s water, a conference has heard. ...

Cambodian and international rights groups have renewed their calls for the release of Phnom Penh housing rights campaigner campaigner Yorm Bopha one year after her arrest, urging the public and national leaders not to forget her during the country’s current political deadlock. Global watchdog Amnesty International ...

More than 200 students and opposition supporters marched Sunday around Phnom Penh’s Wat Phnom with flowers in hand, urging parties to refrain from violence during Saturday’s protest against last month’s contested national election results and for recent incitement charges against two students to be dropped. The ...

Far stricter monitoring of the recruitment and employment of Cambodians and other migrant labourers is needed to ensure the future of the Thai fishing industry, a new study by the International Labour Organization warns. Two and a half per cent of the 241 Cambodians interviewed ...

Citing a lack of public confidence in the official post-election irregularity resolution process – namely, the Constitutional Council’s opening of vote packages – a coalition of leading civil society groups yesterday appealed to the two main political parties to swiftly come back to the negotiating ...

Calls for big-name apparel brands to take more responsibility for working conditions in Cambodian garment factories are growing louder as representatives of retail companies ranging from H&M to Wal-Mart arrive in Phnom Penh for a semi-annual buyers’ forum this week. Since it began three years ...

Straining under the weight of bricks, buckets and metal bars, a faceless army carry their loads from trucks to a massive building site on Penh Penh’s Diamond Island. Hidden beneath wide-brimmed hats and kramas masking their faces from dust and the sun, the battalion of ...

After nearly 50 garment workers were killed last year while travelling to or from their respective factories, the Ministry of Labour has urged truck drivers who cram dozens into the back of vehicles each day to take more care on the roads. In an information session ...

In mid-August, on day seven of production at the Coco Khmer social enterprise, the team experienced a setback. Temperatures in the fermenting room must remain between 35 and 40 degrees to produce the organization’s virgin coconut oil, but the temperature on that rainy day refused to ...

Phnom Penh is one of the least-livable cities in the world, but has also seen relatively strong improvement in quality of life over the past five years, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Global Livability Ranking released this month has found. The analysis of 140 cities, which ...