News

New satellite images of Oddar Meanchey province promise to help settle wildly conflicting deforestation estimates inside a 64,000-hectare area, which is set to anchor the country’s first forest-based carbon trading scheme. With the project potentially ready to sell carbon credits to foreign firms in a matter ...

The number of licensed pawnshops in the country has surged since the government began registering them in 2010, leaving some pawnbrokers claiming revenue losses of 30 to 50 percent due to oversaturation in the market. Ly Seng Cheng, a pawnbroker at the Khlaing Rum Sev pawnshop ...

Her Excellency Dr Ing Kantha Phavi, minister of women's affairs said: "Economic empowerment of women is a key strategy to promote gender equality and poverty alleviation and it is clearly articulated in specific targets under CMDG3 as one important goal among nine goals to be achieved by 2015." Her announcement was made during the forum on ...

Working out of the back of her home in Russei Keo district, Sothearith Neou and a half dozen of her friends and family roast, caramelize and add herbs to gourmet peanuts from 7 a.m. until late at night—trying to fill a seemingly endless number of ...

Both the government and the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies yesterday denied media reports that Cambodia and Vietnam will provide domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. Citing Saudi Arabian newspapers, the news website Emirates 24/7 reported yesterday that Cambodia and Vietnam had agreed to send maids to ...

A Health Ministry official said yesterday the government was still hoping to recoup the last $20 million of a Global Fund grant for fighting malaria that the international charity has held back because of Cambodia’s poor use of fund dollars. Last week, a spokesman for the ...

Five of the eight villagers arrested during a bloody crackdown last month on what the government alleged was a secessionist movement in Kratie province are out on bail. ... Chuk Nguon, an investigating judge at Kratie Provincial court, said five menwere released on May 31 because ...

Opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua departed for the U.S. yesterday in hopes of pressuring Washington into suspending all military aid to Cambodia over the government’s use of soldiers to defend the land holdings of powerful business families. “We have enough evidence that soldiers are providing protection to ...

While observers yesterday accused the government of censorship for ordering radio stations not to transmit international broadcasters over the election weekend, a government spokesman defended the move. On Sunday, a Ministry of Information official said the ministry had ordered local F.M. stations not to transmit Voice ...

Hoping to end the cycle of violence in land disputes in Cambodia, and to garner public support for people who are the victims of land grabbing, five concerned citizens held a press conference Friday to announce the launch of their own online petition whose results ...

In an effort to increase fish stocks, the Ministry of Agriculture on Wednesday adopted a sub-decree to create four conservation areas in Kandal, Kompong Cham, Prey Veng and Takeo provinces where all fishing activities will be prohibited. Signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen on April 6, ...

Ninety-one NGOs put their names to a statement yesterday condemning the government’s escalating use of armed force against peaceful protesters and urged the authorities to engage with them to “break the current cycle of violence and impunity.” Joined by local human rights groups such as Adhoc ...

Violent land evictions, unlawful prison sentences, shooting deaths and crackdowns on peaceful protests are all on a list of allegations a human rights group is voicing concerns about this week. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee condemned the incidents in a statement released on Tuesday, calling ...

About 200 people, including activist monk Loun Savath, rallied outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh yesterday in support of the 13 Boeung Kak women sentenced to prison in a three-hour trial last Thursday. Supporters of the women, including villagers, unions and human rights groups, called ...

In response to a spate of deadly bus crashes in the country, the government has ordered all bus companies to provide authorities with detailed histories of all their drivers, an official at the Ministry of Public Works and Transport said yesterday. Peou Maly, deputy director-general at the ministry’s transportation department, ...

The number of protests over land disputes increased in 2011 as forced resettlement, restrictions on freedom of assembly and the harassment of peaceful protesters continued to tarnish Cambodia’s human rights record, Amnesty International said in its annual report released yesterday. Noting the huge impact of economic ...

The protectionist bent of conservation groups and the development agenda of the government can come together in Cambodia to create a green economy. That is the message of a new book Conservation International (C.I.) launched yesterday in Phnom Penh, outlining practical options for saving the environment ...

More than 60 families in Mondulkiri province’s Roveak village in Rayum commune are worried about their safety and that of their housing after authorities deployed forces to surround their village on Sunday following eviction orders from the government. Bun Sokchea, 49, said that on Saturday, Koh ...

The government needs to act – and act now – to review all economic land concessions, which un­derscore the Kingdom’s dark disease of violent land disputes, rights groups said yesterday. Ten days after Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a regulation for an immediate and indefinite moratorium ...

Government security forces shot dead a teenage girl in Kratie province yesterday morning in a coordinated operation to arrest protesters locked in a long-running land dispute with a rubber company accused of stealing their land. The provincial governor said the joint forces opened fire to defend ...

Hotel and guesthouse operators have pushed back against government calls to avoid price increases during holidays, claiming group booking, as well as supply and demand, dictated the price of accommodation. Government officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, have recently tried to dissuade operators from raising the ...

Almost six months after the latest draft of the proposed trade-union law was sent to the Council of Ministers for approval, employers, unions and workers’ rights groups are left asking the same question: What’s happened to it? Confusion over the status of the landmark law, which ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans Thursday to encourage rubber smallholdings in a bid to expand production as the country promotes the cash crop as the number two commodity after rice. Hun Sen said the government will support not only large-scale rubber plantations but also ...

About 50 people protested in front of Pailin Provincial Hall yesterday against a government plan to turn their farmland in Sala Krao district into a special economic zone (SEZ), villagers and officials said. ... “It is the villagers that abuse the government land. They took the ...