Social development

Approximately 1,500 young Cambodian people on Saturday performed the “Madison,” a popular dance during Khmer wedding receptions and New Year celebrations, here in order to call for an end of violence against women and girls, an organizer said. Inala Fathimath, a gender program specialist at the ...

More than a hundred monks and rights activists marching to Phnom Penh for International Human Rights Day were blocked by soldiers and police at their starting point in Takeo province’s Kirivong district yesterday. ...

A UN delegation met with Ratanakkiri province’s deputy police chief yesterday afternoon to discuss the fate of 13 Montagnard asylum seekers who have been hiding in the province in recent weeks. The provincial administration, however, has continued to call for the group’s deportation. Deputy police chief ...

Ignoring objections and even vague threats made by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Cambodian activists in South Korea plan to stage a protest on Sunday ahead of a five-day summit Prime Minister Hun Sen is scheduled to attend on December 10. Around 1,500 opposition supporters intend to ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday that his government has mainly focused on retaining a sustainable economic growth and setting out strategies to ensure the gradual alleviation of poverty, according to a spokesman. Poverty rate in Cambodia has declined to 19.8 percent in 2011, ...

Cambodian police said Wednesday they were scouring remote northeastern jungles for a group of Vietnamese Montagnards who crossed the border in an apparent attempt to seek asylum. Rights groups say 13 of the hill tribe people, including one woman, fled persecution in Vietnam late last month ...

A Ministry of Social Affairs official yesterday announced that, starting next year, the government would offer regular payments of 20,000 riel (about $5) to all disabled Cambodians, a benefit that so far has only been available to retired disabled soldiers. In an announcement that coincided with ...

Cambodian authorities are hunting more than a dozen ethnic minority hill people from Vietnam, drawing international criticism and raising further doubts about Australia’s controversial agreement to send refugees to Phnom Penh. Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), warned ...

A team from the United Nations refugee agency traveled to northeast Cambodia Wednesday to meet with 13 ethnic Montagnards seeking asylum in the country after fleeing alleged persecution in Vietnam, according to an agency spokesperson and a member of a local rights group. United Nations High ...

Cambodia has performed better than last year in its effort to fight corruption, but it is still slow, an international anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday.   The index ranks Cambodia 156 out of 175 countries this year, up from a 160 ranking last year. ...

Four more goods made in Cambodia have been linked to exploitative child labour, adding to a mounting list of items the United States considers to be produced in violation of international rights laws. The mounting number of Cambodian goods found to use child labour runs ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights said that it would deliver Tuesday a giant photo petition to the Ministry of Justice as part of its annual Campaign to End Impunity. A statement on Monday said that CCHR has collected 263 photos of people holding signs that ...

As Cambodia braces for a cold snap expected to last through early January, the Ministry of Health on Sunday evening urged citizens to take precautions against common winter maladies. In a joint statement with the World Health Organization (WHO), the ministry warned that the Kingdom is ...

A UN special rapporteur will take the cause of Cambodia’s land-eviction battles and the abuses faced by those waging them to the UN Human Rights Council, according to a report released today. Michel Forst, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, will file ...

Eight land activists put in prison last month after a swift trial say they will hold a hunger strike if they are not released. The eight activists were part of a roundup in November for street protests against city officials and a development project at ...

Two ethnic Jarai Montagnards claiming to have fled religious persecution in Vietnam may have been arrested by local police in Ratanakkiri province, a rights worker has said. The UN is seeking to intervene in the case and has requested government cooperation while several more Christian Montagnards ...

The 3rd edition of the National Book Fair kicked off here on Friday with an aim of encouraging the habit of book reading, officials said. The 3-day event, held at the National Library of Cambodia, exhibited tens of thousands of books from about 30 libraries, ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday lashed out at critics who claimed that the recent arrests of four opposition officials for their alleged roles in a violent protest were politically motivated, saying they had committed criminal acts and must be tried according to law. The ...

Following a huge outcry from medical students, the University of Health Sciences agreed yesterday to lower a planned rise in annual tuition for those hoping to pursue a medical specialty beyond their general degree. The students then agreed to accept the rector’s offer of $2,250, ...

After facing heavy criticism for the conditions inside its drug-rehabilitation centres, the Ministry of Health has said it will begin offering an alternative community-based approach at health centres nationwide by 2015. According to Chhum Vanarith, a secretary of state in the Health Ministry, the alternative ...

Cambodia’s Labor Ministry on Thursday awarded some of the best performing companies in the country for their work on HIV and AIDS education and prevention at workplaces. Labor Minister Ith Samheng handed over 124 awards to enterprises in a range of sectors, including the garment industry, ...

More than 100 soldiers in Pursat province have threatened to resign en masse after being ordered to bulldoze their own lands, which are claimed by tycoon Try Pheap’s MDS Import Export Company. The threat of mass resignations came two days after a soldier, Seng Pov, took ...

Cambodia has drastically reduced the amount of human rights recommendations it will implement as part of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review, saying they were overly repetitive. While Cambodia was criticised for deferring recommendations, which dealt with issues such as freedom of expression and the ...

The risk of Ebola coming into Cambodia remains low despite a recent Ebola scare in Thailand, officials from the Ministry of Health’s Communicable Diseases Control said at a conference yesterday, while still noting that the Kingdom remains vulnerable to other, lesser-known diseases. CDC head Ly ...