Social development

The National Assembly’s 12-member permanent committee will take its first look at the country’s $3.54 billion draft budget for 2014 on Monday, though officials are still refusing to offer a breakdown of how the money will be spent. The draft, which allocates more than $400 million ...

A Cambodian court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former politician who shot and wounded three garment workers in 2012 but has yet to serve any time behind bars in a case that has prompted outrage from rights groups. Judge Taing Sun Lay also ...

The Cambodian and Malaysian governments will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) within three months that will restart the business of sending Cambodian domestic workers to the country after a two-year moratorium, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. After meeting with representatives from the Malaysian Home ...

The government will likely sell a Japanese-style medical service to Cambodia in a package that includes an emergency care center, a medical graduate school and an insurance system. The government has decided to seek a market for the medical service in emerging nations in the Association ...

As protests against land grabbing have increased in Phnom Penh in the past five years, so too have violent crackdowns by the authorities. Police have been criticised for their treatment of protesters – which has included beatings with electric batons and kicks to the stomach of ...

Cambodia’s newly appointed minister of commerce said Thursday that he plans to reform the country’s economy ahead of Cambodia’s entrance into the Asean Economic Community (AEC) 2015, though he and other officials did not say how they plan to accomplish that goal. Speaking to reporters on ...

Cambodia is home to some 400,000 Cham Muslims. The ethnic group, like many others, suffered terrible losses during the Khmer Rouge regime. Lives were lost and cultural landmarks destroyed. Now, as mosques and heritage sites around the country are demolished to make way for more ...

It has been one year since Cambodia announced that it was lifting its ban on intercountry adoptions beginning January 1, 2013, but despite praising Cambodia’s efforts to implement international regulations, countries that ban adoptions of Cambodians said this week that they were no closer to ...

Herbalife Ltd, a global nutrition company whose business practices are being challenged in a US court and whose marketing strategies have been the subject of public criticism, will officially open a six-storey distribution centre in Phnom Penh today, according to the New York Stock Exchange-listed ...

An ethnic Jarai family has been evicted from their Ratanakirri province village where they say they received death threats over a land dispute. This is the third time the family has abandoned their home after they field a lawsuit against three commune authorities in 2011, alleging ...

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

The Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Kingdom of Cambodia has announced a new human case of H5N1 avian influenza, according to a ministry press release Wednesday. The case is a 6-year-old girl from Romdoul village, O Romdoul commune, Phnom Preuk district, Battambang province confirmed positive ...

Malaysia has not yet received a draft agreement aimed at protecting Cambodian migrant domestic workers from abuse, but the government is pressing Cambodia to lift its two-year moratorium on sending maids, a Malaysian official said Wednesday. In October 2011, Prime Minister Hun Sen imposed a ban ...

The death of a miner on Monday in a pit collapse in Preah Vihear is under investigation by Adhoc, the rights group has said. Lor Chann, Adhoc coordinator in Preah Vihear province, said yesterday that the miner died while working for a private mining firm in ...

Cambodia is making headway on its 2015 Millennium Development Goal to improve maternal health and is ahead of its target to reduce its under-five child mortality rate, but it still lags behind neighbouring countries, the 2013 State of the World Population Report has revealed. Released yesterday, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged convicted British pedophile Richard Fruin, 36, with sexually abusing two brothers, aged 8 and 11, at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, court officials said. While the court has yet to decide Fruin’s fate, his case—and many similar ...

Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district. Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, ...

More women should be part of any future high-level negotiations between the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP to resolve the current political deadlock, a coalition of women’s rights NGOs said Tuesday in a statement. In a joint statement by more than 20 organizations, the groups criticized ...

The International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) releases the first report from its mobile phone call-in project aimed at educating garment and footwear workers. The mobile phone project entitled Kamako Chhnoeum (‘Outstanding Worker’ in Khmer) received 3,245 valid phone calls in its first two ...

An Oddar Meanchey director of education is denying a complaint filed to the Ministry of Education alleging he took school supplies from a public school for use in a private school and pocketed salaries of teachers who no longer worked there. In a letter dated Monday, ...

DAMBE DISTRICT, Kompong Cham Province – Lying on makeshift stretchers, seated in cheap wheelchairs, blind people wearing dark glasses, children with twisted limbs and slack jaws—all sat on the dirt clasping smoking sticks of incense and muttering quiet prayers Tuesday, hoping to be healed. Among ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...