Social development

In a ceremony on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health appointed a new advisor – the Swiss Dr. Beat Richner, founder of the Kantha Bopha Hospital and Foundation. His hospitals have treated more than 15 million children since the first one opened in 1991 and Minister ...

After police in Preah Vihear province blocked the U.N.’s human rights envoy from meeting with indigenous villagers earlier this week, Rhona Smith sat down with Interior Minister Sar Kheng in Phnom Penh on Wednesday and called for better communication between national and local government officials. ...

Women’s Affairs Minister Dr. Ung Kanthaphavy addressed multiple points regarding the achievement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in the Kingdom during a two-day meeting reviewing the ministry’s work in 2015 and planning its goals for 2016 yesterday.​ ...

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia met with Stung Treng Governor Mom Saroen yesterday to discuss the plight of ethnic minorities in the province affected by the Lower Sesan 2 dam project. ...

For generations, the indigenous Bunong were famous as the great elephant keepers and masters of the forests in eastern Cambodia. They called the fertile, rolling hills of their ancestral homeland “meh ne,” or mother – a source of food, livelihoods and self-identity. ...

The U.S.’s Denver Art Museum on Monday officially returned a 10th century sandstone sculpture taken from a Cambodian temple during civil-war era to Cambodia. ...

The Ministry of Health has advised the Kingdom’s citizen’s to be wary of food and alcohol poisoning during the Khmer New Year celebrations, according to a joint press release between the Ministry of Health and World Health Organization (WHO) issued last week. ...

The Environment and Education Ministries will expand their eco-school program to all primary and secondary schools across the country over the course of 2017, provided they have the necessary human and financial resources to do so. ...

The government was unaware of about half of the residential child care centers operating in four provinces and Phnom Penh prior to a study conducted last year, according to a report released on Thursday. ...

The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) has called on schools to adopt a flexible school uniform policy to help transgender students and for the government to introduce(CCHR) anti-discrimination laws, in partnership with a USAID program worth almost $300,000.   ...

A new survey released by Cambodia’s Social Affairs Ministry on Thursday showed that the number of residential care institutions in the country’s five key provinces increased to 267 last year, up 92 percent from only 139 in the year before. ...

Former residents of Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community on Wednesday handed petitions to the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, requesting that she intervene in their feud with authorities after they were snubbed by City Hall earlier in the day.   ...

Cambodia is closely watching the situation of yellow fever virus, though the country has not seen any case of the virus, said a joint statement from the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization on Wednesday. ...

A new study suggests that “emanators” that slowly release chemical vapors over time could be an effective way to keep mosquitoes at bay, even when people cannot shelter under mosquito nets. ...

The independence of the country’s judiciary was among the issues that UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Rhona Smith raised yesterday during a meeting with the minister of justice as part of her 10-day visit. ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia met with local rights advocates on Monday as she began her second fact-finding mission to the country, one of the meeting’s attendees said.   ...

The U.S. Army is looking to store a mobile emergency field hospital in Cambodia to be used in the case of a regional disaster, a defense industry news website reported last week.   ...

The government should throw its weight behind Cambodia’s young and dynamic private sector, which has the talent and skills to capitalise on the opportunities presented by ASEAN regional economic integration, a government adviser said during a forum on Friday.     ...

Physical, sexual and emotional violence against women is “common” in Ratanakkiri’s ethnic minority communities, and mostly committed by the victims’ husbands, a new gender-based violence report by CARE Cambodia has found. ...

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia today announced she will be visiting the country Monday to assess the enjoyment of rights by women and indigenous peoples in the country. ...

Fear of government interference, legal repercussions and violence remain impediments to free and independent journalism in Cambodia, according to a survey released on Wednesday in a report by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM). ...

Efforts to catch and fight dengue outbreaks in Cambodia are more likely to be effective if they are conducted at the provincial level, according to a study published last week in online science journal BioMed Central. ...

USAID is spending $1 million on a project the aim of which will improve nutrition across four provinces by training women in farming practices that have higher yields, produce more nutrient-rich vegetables and require less resources. ...

The Health Ministry has yet to respond to a request from the Interior Ministry last week seeking assistance in dealing with drug abuse in the country’s prisons and rehabilitation centers, Interior Ministry secretary of state Nuth Sa An said yesterday. ...