The Guardian

Kwak Nga was still reeling from her husband’s suicide when his microfinance creditors showed up at her home to remind her that they still expected the approximate $170 (£140) monthly interest payments the couple had struggled to make. ...

A Cambodian government decision to postpone building new hydropower dams on the Mekong river has been welcomed by campaigners, who say it will provide welcome relief to the tens of thousands of people whose livelihood depend upon its rich resources. ...

According to Gray, the snaring crisis is worst in Vietnam and Laos, but is increasing in Cambodia – where he works – as well as Myanmar, Indonesia and Thailand. In some places – even protected areas – it is so bad that scientists talk of ...

The jobs of nearly 90% of garment and footwear workers in Cambodia and Vietnam are at risk from automated assembly lines – or “sewbots” – according to a new report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). ...

The garment industry is the linchpin of Cambodia’s economy, and the single biggest employer of women. Some 500 factories hire almost 500,000 female workers, many of whom are young and have migrated to the city from the countryside. ...

Climate change and globalisation are fuelling an explosion in the pests and diseases that afflict south-east Asia’s cassava crops, threatening a multi-billion dollar industry and the staple food of millions of people, a report warns. ...

Scientists warn that plans to build dams across Tonlé Sap, south-east Asia’s greatest lake, could be an ecological timebomb threatening the food security of millions. In a few months’ time, monsoon rains will more than quadruple the size of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap, south-east Asia’s greatest lake ...

Despite the creation of a 200-hectare conservation area, fishing communities on south-east Asia’s largest freshwater lake fear their way of life is slipping away. ...

The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the Mekong river. With world leaders meeting in Paris next week for crucial UN climate talks, John Vidal journeys down south-east Asia’s vast waterway – a place that encapsulates some of the dilemmas they ...

Decades after poachers stripped the forests surrounding Angkor Wat of large mammals, an innovative conservation group is bringing them back. Already, Wildlife Alliance has rewilded the forest with gibbons and langurs. And more are coming. ...

An environmental activist explains how a grassroots campaign has stalled the building of a dam in Cambodia. We started making more videos and putting them on Facebook. Even locals who didn’t have internet at home were somehow finding the videos and interest started picking up ...

Cambodia’s fight against malaria is at risk of being derailed because of a dispute over expenses payments between the Cambodian government and the Global Fund, the biggest donor to the country’s malaria programme. ...

Three refugees who have agreed to travel to Cambodia are being housed in the Nauru detention centre before they are scheduled to fly out. There are currently just four refugees who have agreed to take up the Australian government’s resettlement offer in Cambodia, despite a large ...

Just one refugee on Nauru has taken up the Australian government’s offer to settle Cambodia, according to a Cambodian official. A Cambodian interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak told the Cambodia Daily that a Rohingya man was so far the only refugee who had taken up the ...

Australian immigration officials have approached asylum seekers within the Nauru detention centre about resettlement in Cambodia, apparently in contravention of the agreement between the two countries. The settlement agreement with Cambodia specifies that offers should be made only to people with refugee status. But it ...

Logistical issues could take a few days to sort out but some on Nauru want to start new lives in a new country, immigration minister says. Peter Dutton has insisted plans to send the first batch of refugees from Nauru to Cambodia are on track and ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says Australia is violating the rights of children being sent from Nauru to Cambodia under the refugee transfer agreement. In the coming week, possibly as early as Monday, a charter plane is expected to fly out from Nauru with ...

The European Union has agreed to investigate forced displacement claims in relation to Cambodia’s troubled sugar industry. The move could see thousands of villagers compensated for illegally confiscated land and loss of earnings. The Clean Sugar Campaign – which has been calling on the EU to ...

The deal signed with Cambodia by immigration minister Scott Morrison will see refugees held on Nauru resettled “outside” Phnom Penh. As foreign minister Julie Bishop defended the deal on Sunday, a copy of the memorandum of understanding with Cambodia, which has been posted on Morrison’s official ...

A series of high-flying creatures, including giant flying frogs and squirrels and a parachute gecko, are among the hundreds of exotic new species recently discovered in the greater Mekong region in southeast Asia. A new eyeless spider and a fish that mates head-to-head are also highlighted ...

Prak Sovannary tries to put on a brave face. She has just heard that two of 23 men arrested during a violent crackdown on garment worker protests in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last month have unexpectedly been released on bail.Her husband, Vorn Pao, a prominent activist and union leader, is not ...

Fish imports from Belize, Guinea and Cambodia are to be banned from the European Union, and three more countries have been warned their imports are in danger, in the first major sanction against countries that allow illegal fishing operations to carry on under their countries’ ...

H&M has pledged to pay a living wage to 850,000 textile workers after expressing frustration over a lack of action by governments to address working conditions in Asian factories in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster. The world’s second-biggest clothing retailer said it would support ...

In Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from Hun Sen, the prime minister, who has promised reforms after his party suffered a significant blow in recent elections, but from environmental activists and campaigners, who say there has never before been such an opportunity ...