Social development

A report based on interviews with 54 children has exposed critical failings in Cambodia’s judicial system, recounting stories of unpleasant experiences in the presence of police, doctors and court rooms. UNICEF and Hagar, a child rights NGO based in Cambodia, released Wednesday “A System Just for ...

Health Minister Mam Bunheng announced yesterday he has proposed that a reserve budget be used to help victims of the mass HIV outbreak in Battambang province’s Roka village, as he vowed to strengthen health services across the country. Speaking at a press conference following questioning by ...

A secretary of state at the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday defended the government’s widely criticized imprisonment of 11 activists and an opposition official during a closed-door meeting with a visiting U.S. diplomat. Daniel Russel, an assistant secretary of state at the U.S. government’s Bureau of ...

Over 470,000 units of unauthorised or expired drugs were confiscated during a crackdown on unlicensed medical facilities in Siem Reap City this week, according to provincial police. The inspections of health facilities started on Friday with city economic police working with the provincial health department to ...

Cambodia’s Minister of Health on Tuesday vowed to eliminate the country’s unlicensed medical clinics and hire more health care providers, after an unauthorized medical worker who admitted to reusing syringes was linked to a mass HIV infection in a remote western village. ...

Almost a quarter of Cambodian students aged 7 to 14 are forced to give up school because their work intercedes, according to a new study by UNESCO. With 10 per cent of 7- to 14-year-olds classified as child labourers, Cambodia has more young children working ...

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is overhauling his nation’s overseas adoption system and wants to get Cambodia involved in the process, according to Australian media. Abbott requested Attorney General George Brandis pursue fresh agreements and adoption negotiations, including with Cambodia, Bulgaria, Latvia and Kenya, the Sunday ...

Villagers in three provinces are currently being surveyed by the Ministry of Rural Development and South Korea’s International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) for an upcoming development pilot project. The surveys in Takeo, Kampong Speu and Tbong Khmum provinces seek to find 30 villages to be a part ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday released a statement condemning National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha for his admission that he sanctioned a “partisan use of force” in a January 15 speech in which he spoke of opposition protesters as the military police’s foes. ...

Seeking to amend Cambodia’s shortage of skilled labourers and equip young secondary school graduates with employable trades, the government will soon roll out a new technical training curriculum at select high schools. ...

As 14 Montagnard asylum seekers continue to evade authorities in the forests of Ratanakkiri province, an official said Sunday that police deported seven “Vietnamese Jarai” from the northeastern province on Saturday. Ratanakkiri provincial police chief Nguon Koeun said border police arrested the seven on Saturday in ...

Hundreds of indigenous families from Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district have demanded the government cancel the economic land concession of a Vietnamese rubber company that they say is illegally prospecting for gold. About a dozen people representing 384 families handed a petition to CNRP lawmakers yesterday requesting ...

Health Minister Mam Bunheng has been summoned for questioning next week by the National Assembly’s health commission over the outbreak of HIV among villagers in Battambang province’s Ro­ka commune, the commission’s secretary-general said Friday. ...

Cambodia is launching its first university-level climate change curriculum, according to USAID, which is supporting the pilot program.​ ...

Sixteen local NGOs released a joint statement Thursday calling on Prime Minister Hun Sen to publicly repudiate National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha’s January 15 speech in which he said he learned strategy from Adolf Hitler. ...

Three of the refugees Australia is holding at a detention center on the South Pacific island nation of Nauru agreed to meet with Cambodian officials who traveled there last week to assess the possibility of resettling some of the asylum seekers in Cambodia, Interior Minister ...

Municipal anti-human trafficking police arrested three suspects in the past two days for allegedly sending at least four Cambodian women to marry men in China over the past year. Municipal anti-human trafficking police chief Keo Thea said one of the four Cambodian women sent to China ...

The head of the country’s largest teachers’ association sent an open letter to Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron on Wednesday contending that there is a serious shortage of textbooks and teacher manuals due to corruption and indifference on the part of ministry officials. Rong Chhun, president ...

The presence of dozens of riot police yesterday swiftly ended the first day of Boeung Kak land-rights activist Yorm Bopha’s planned month-long protest in the capital’s Freedom Park. At virtually the same time, Surya Subedi, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, visited a ...

Two Cambodian university students won $8,000 on Monday by placing second in a regional stock trading competition, after making it to the final round of the contest ahead of nearly 2,000 other teams from across Southeast Asia. ...

Abuse, discrimination, exploitation and corruption are endemic in Cambodia’s prisons, spurred on by judicial and penal systems “driven by nepotism”, according to a new report from local rights group Licadho. The report, Rights at a Price: Life Inside Cambodia’s Prisons, which was released yesterday, details a ...

Some 50 Daun Penh district security guards and about as many riot police prevented 100 anti-eviction protesters from gathering at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Tuesday after the city deemed the gathering illegal. The protesters were from a number of eviction-hit communities, including the Boeng Kak ...

The International Organisation for Migration has told the Cambodian government it is willing to take part in the resettlement of refugees from Nauru if a number of conditions are met.​ ...

The opposition CNRP plans to screen the banned documentary film “Who Killed Chea Vichea?” this week to mark the 11th anniversary of the Free Trade Union (FTU) leader’s assassination in front of a newspaper stall in Phnom Penh on January 22, 2004. CNRP public affairs director ...