Social development

The Ocean Garment manager facing a slew of sexual harassment charges has lashed out at the union representing the 2,500 workers on strike over the past two weeks, claiming its delegates provoked the strike after management cracked down on absent workers and overtime requests. In a ...

Two months after their release from Prey Sar prison, members of the so-called Boeung Kak 13 were yesterday at the forefront of more calls for authorities to mark out land promised to their community. About 50 Boeung Kak women and children gathered outside to urge authorities to ...

A mission to examine political rights in Cambodia has been increasingly overshadowed by the Kingdom’s dire land rights situation, the 2012 report from Cambodia’s UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights, published yesterday, shows. Cambodia’s rapporteur, Surya Subedi, conducted two fact-finding missions to Cambodia ...

The 44th economic ministers (AEM) meeting and related meetings will be held from 25 August-1 September, 2012 in Siem Reap province. The ministers will focus on the economic community in 2015 and boost economic council to move forward  because this community is going smoother than other two ...

The 10th High Quality Vietnamese Products and Exports trade fair opened yesterday in the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh. It has attracted around 150 firms who have  set up 250 booths to display more than 2,000 products, including electronics, consumer goods, stationary, books, construction materials, ...

Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency (CRRT) wrote a letter to Ms. Elizabeth M. Murphy, Secretary of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 7, 2012 to back up PWYP’s recommendations and to encourage the Commission to define the “Project” in relation to each lease, license ...

(UN ESCAP Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section)- “Investing in women’s entrepreneurial leadership, and the empowerment of women, is smart economics- which is why women’s empowerment is one of the most important development priorities for the countries of Asia and the Pacifc,” said Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, ...

Women sales promoters working in bars in Cambodia are occasionally exposed to harassment by customers varying from being coerced into drinking and in some cases, being subjected to sexual abuse. Cambodia Carlsberg Group and The Danish Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) have joined forces in a ...

The Council of Ministers on Friday approved a draft report on political rights in Cambodia, which made outline efforts being made by the government to reduce poverty and secure land titles for millions across the country, a measure that Cambodia must complete as a signatory ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday agreed to delay today’s scheduled questioning of well-known rights investigator Chan Soveth, who has been charged with aiding an unnamed perpetrator in an unnamed crime. Local human rights group Adhoc requested a delay of the court appearance on the grounds that Mr. Soveth is ...

A Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge yesterday approved a proposal to delay the case against human-rights worker Chan Soveth, according to his employer, Adhoc. Soveth has been accused of providing assistance to “specific perpetrators”. Although the court did not provide names, an anonymous court official recently ...

Cambodia’s second conference on social enterprise is set to take place tomorrow with the aim of tackling poverty, social exclusion and health and environmental problems, organisers say. The all-day conference, at the Cambodia-Japan Conference Centre at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, will facilitate discussions among participants ...

More than 2,500 Ocean Garment factory workers jostled with about 100 military police in the capital’s Dangkor district yesterday in their second protest march over the alleged sexual harassment of four female employees. In an inter-governmental ministerial committee meeting on Tuesday, Ocean – which supplies ...

Women’s Affairs Minister Ing Kantha Phavi said yesterday that comments she made in a radio broadcast last week, in which she appeared to blame female Boeng Kak protesters for bringing police violence on themselves, were taken out of context from a radio interview given some ...

More than 2,00 female workers from a factory in Phnom Penh that makes clothes for the U.S. brand Gap protested yesterday for a third straight day demanding that the firm sack a manager at the factory for allegedly abusing workers. Lining Russian Boulevard near the Ocean ...

The second mass fainting in a month at Kampong Chhnang’s M&V garment factory, a supplier for global retailer H&M, saw 23 women taken to hospital yesterday, bringing the total number of affected workers in August to 67. Noun Sam Ol, president of the Free Trade Union ...

Cambodia needed to invest in women to aid its development and integration into the ASEAN economic community, United Nations Under Secretary-General Noeleen Heyzer said yesterday. Heyzer, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific(ESCAP), met with Minister of Women’s Affairs Ing Kantha ...

Ocean Garment yesterday refused to meet the sole demand of thousands of striking workers to have their manager, accused of sexual harassment, sacked. An inter-governmental ministerial committee met with union and employer representatives, but Bangladeshi-owned Ocean Garment – which supplies retail titan Gap – refused to ...

Twenty-three workers at the M&V garment factory fainted yesterday morning in Kompong Chhang province, the second thime in a week that a mass faining has occured at the factory, a Labor Ministry official said. Meng Hong, a member of a workplace safety committee that the Ministry ...

The mental health sector faces a sever lack of funding that could ultimately undermine Cambodia’s development and the governemnt’s own health care goals, concludes a new report by the human rights law center at Fordham University in New York. In a comparative study on Cambodia’s mental ...

The Minister of Social Affairs has sent a letter to the management of the Tai Yang and Camwell garment factories, suppliers to Levi’s and Gap, requesting it reinstate 37 workers involved in a strike that has dragged on for almost two months. “In order to ensure ...

Dozens of women and children from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Woman’s Affairs yesterday to demand that the minister recant her claim that they had attacked police during a June 27 protest in which one of the women ...

The Svay Rieng Provincial Court has wrapped up an investigation of February’s triple shooting of female garment workers in Bavet City, a case in which the city’s former governor, Chhouk Bundith, is still the only suspect, a court official said yesterday. The court has charged ...

Government officials met with more than 200 Phnom Penh families on Friday to lay out the state’s case for ownership of their land and the compensation they can expect when they are evicted from their homes situated along the city’s railway tracks. The $142 million project ...