News

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has launched an internal investigation into a complaint lodged against the institution for investing in a Vietnamese rubber firm accused of illegal logging and land grabbing in Ratanakkiri, an NGO and villager said yesterday. Earlier this month, representatives of the IFC’s ...

Soft-drinks giant PepsiCo has pledged to take a “zero-tolerance” approach to land grabs by its sugar suppliers. In a statement posted on the company’s website on Tuesday, it said the move came in response to a campaign by Oxfam, which targeted Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. ...

Hundreds of trucks hauling sugarcane queue up along the dusty roads that cut a path through a plantation in Kampong Speu province. Their destination: Cambodia’s most advanced sugar refinery. Its owners say the landmark project, run by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company and its president, ruling ...

The World Bank’s ombudsman office says it will assess a complaint from indigenous groups in Ratanakkiri province that a bank-supported company has damaged the forest and surrounding communities. Seventeen different groups joined in the complaint, claiming the Hoang Anh Gia Lai rubber company, which receives ...

Third-party auditors hired by The Coca-Cola Company are conducting an audit of Cambodian sugar suppliers, NGO and community representatives said yesterday. “Coke has commissioned them to conduct an assessment on their suppliers. They will talk to all parties, the community, NGOs and the company,” said Eang ...

The government on Monday agreed to a comprehensive solution for rural families who have lost their land to well-connected agricultural plantations exporting sugar to the European Union (E.U.) duty free and will meet again early next month to discuss details. The decision was made at a ...

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 ...

A member of the European Parliament is in Cambodia investigating agri-business firms accused of evicting hundreds of families while benefiting from a free-trade scheme with Europe worth millions of dollars, according to the NGO Equitable Cambodia. The visit from France’s Patrice Tirolien follows a resolution the ...

Three NGOs on Wednesday called on ANZ Royal Bank to help the hundreds of families who have lost farmland to a sugar plantation that the bank helped to finance in Kompong Speu province. The NGOs also made public a 2013 social and environmental impact assessment of ...

At least four people were injured, one seriously, after Thai soldiers shot them as they allegedly illegally logged the Thai side of the Preah Vihear border on Wednesday. The injured men were part of a group of eight from Preah Vihear province’s Choam Ksan district, provincial ...

Koh Kong Sugar has offered to settle its yearslong dispute with Cambodian families who accuse its plantations of stealing their land, but the farmers remain wary of being able to secure a fair deal. The firm, a subsidiary of Thailand’s Khon Kaen Sugar Industry Limited (KSL), ...

More than 55,000 people have joined an online petition set up by a pair of French nongovernment groups urging the European Union (E.U.) to immediately launch an investigation into local sugar plantations accused of illegally evicting hundreds of Cambodian families. At the center of the dispute ...

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 ...

U.K. sugar firm Tate & Lyle on Wednesday said it was looking into recent allegations of child labor on two plantations in Koh Kong province it has been buying sugar from since 2010, but rebuked NGOs for not bringing the claims to its attention sooner. The ...

A London-based sugar trade association aiming to promote a more ethical and sustainable industry will meet early next month to consider a request from Cambodian farmers that it eject U.K.-based sugar firm Tate & Lyle from the group unless it gives them back their land. Some ...

Asia’s largest sugar company has been accused of torching hundreds of homes, orchestrating the imprisonment of a pregnant activist and using security forces to beat villagers – among a raft of other grave human rights abuses – by communities in Oddar Meanchey province. The allegations levelled ...

The European union’s executive arm has responded to its parliamentarians’ concerns over rights abuses stemming from Cambodia’s economic land concessions, maintaining that, should the need arise, it “will be ready” to withdraw from its preferential trade agreements with the Kingdom. In a joint letter to concerned ...

Three companies accused of illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province are in possession of a combined 30,000 hectares of economic land concessions (ELCs) that are likely illegal because they are owned by the same parent firm. Hoang Anh Andong Meas, Hoang Anh Lumphat and Hoang Anh Ouyadav ...

More than four years after the violent forced eviction of about 800 families from Dey Krahorm in the capital’s high-rent Tonle Bassac commune, small-scale construction is finally beginning on the site. In the past month, the skeletons of a future barbecue restaurant and a beer garden ...

Families living along a planned national train route in Poipet town were told they have 10 days to vacate their properties or be forcibly evicted, residents and NGOs said yesterday. Eang Vuthy, Development Watch Program Manager of Equitable Cambodia, said an eviction notice from the Poipet ...

The Asian Development Bank said yesterday problems with a railway rehabilitation project – funded by the bank and AusAID – identified by a local NGO that was suspended by the government last month “may require further investigation or analysis”. In July, STT released a report ...