Latest Documents
DocumentOpen letter from civil society organizations Request for NagaWorld Labor Dispute Resolution and Release and Dismissal Charges against 8 union leaders and activistsReleased in February 2022
We, the undersigned civil society organizations working on the promotion and protection of human rights labor rights, land rights , environmental activists, independent analyst and social researcher in the Kingdom of Cambodia, wish to inform His Excellency of our deep disappointment at the authorities’ abuse of the Cambodian legal framework to wrongly arrest, detain and charge eight union leaders and continues to arrest more union activists for their peaceful exercise of freedom of association and freedom of assembly, both of which are protected in domestic and international law.
Therefore, we, the undersigned civil society organizations working on the promotion and protection of human rights and labor rights in Cambodia, request His Excellency to intervene in order to have the eight jailed union leaders and activists released and all charges against them dropped and to find a just and fair resolution to this labor dispute.
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Released in November 2021
Facebook dominates Cambodia’s social media space and, through inaction and neglect, has created a platform that is too often a site of government surveillance and harassment, as well as sexual harassment, discrimination, threats, and other harassment from private individuals.
In a new report, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) is calling on Facebook, the Cambodian government, and other social media companies to do more to protect human rights online. “Status Update: Harassment on Social Media in Cambodia” is a report detailing the findings of a survey of more than 700 people conducted by LICADHO. More than one-third (38%) of respondents had experienced online harassment, with LGBT+ people, youth, and activists facing such harassment at even higher rates. Moreover, 20% percent of women respondents had experienced sexual harassment online.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 6.13 MBs) | |
| Listen to audio version in Khmer |
Released in June 2021
Right to Relief is a call for immediate action to be taken by microloan providers - both microfinance institutions (MFIs) and banks - as well as their international investors, including state development banks from Europe and the United States, to investigate the scope of human rights abuses and provide relief to borrowers who have suffered from predatory lending and collection practices. The research spans eight provinces in Cambodia, with each community profile featuring information about the community’s formation in response to a land conflict, and the threat to land tenure security and other human rights now posed by over-indebtedness.
A website features highlights from the 14 community profiles, while a PDF of the report contains more complete profiles and additional information about the project.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 7.46 MBs) |
Released in December 2020
The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) today is releasing “The Fight for Freedom: Attacks on Human Rights Defenders, 2018-2020”.“The Fight for Freedom” is not an exhaustive list of all attacks targeting human rights defenders since the beginning of 2018. Instead, it highlights a number of high-profile cases where human rights defenders have been targeted for intimidation, arrest or imprisonment while trying to peacefully exercise their rights to association, assembly and expression as guaranteed both in Cambodia’s constitution and under international law.
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| Download this briefing in Khmer (PDF, 16.65 MBs) |
Released in December 2020
Women and children who are raped by a family member are too often being denied both the safety that they need and the justice they are entitled to. This December, to mark the global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign which runs from 25 November to 10 December, LICADHO is releasing “Broken Silence: Rape by Relatives and Barriers to Justice in Cambodia”.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 5.23 MBs) |
Released in July 2020
More than one million people across Phnom Penh are facing the risk of increased flooding and over one thousand more families are at risk of evictions, loss of income and food insecurity as the ING City project and other unsustainable developments destroy the Tompoun/Cheung Ek wetlands in the capital’s south.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 7.84 MBs) |
Released in June 2020
Tens of thousands of garment workers in Cambodia will struggle to repay microfinance debts during work stoppages and factory suspensions caused by COVID-19, creating a mounting human rights crisis as they struggle to feed their families and hold onto their land under immense pressure from microfinance institutions (MFIs). Without immediate debt relief, many of these workers will resort to selling their land or their homes, eating less food or taking out even more loans to repay their debts.
In Worked to Debt, a joint briefing paper between the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU), the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), researchers surveyed more than 150 workers – most of them women – from three factories in Phnom Penh and Kampong Chhnang to investigate how workers were coping with their debts as hundreds of factories suspended operations as a result of the global pandemic.
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| Download this briefing in Khmer (PDF, 6.76 MBs) | |
| Listen to audio version in Khmer |
Released in May 2020
“The benefits of MFIs are short, but the fear is long.”
Throughout Cambodia’s northwest, widespread microfinance debt is pushing families from their homes to find work across the Thai border. In this briefing paper “Driven Out: A study on MFIs and Cross-Border Migration”, LICADHO focuses on a single village in Banteay Meanchey province to dig deeper into the link between microfinance debt and migration in Cambodia’s borderlands. Through interviews conducted with remaining family members from 30 households, LICADHO’s researchers found that over-indebtedness to microfinance institutions (MFIs) was the primary motivating factor for migration in the village.
“Far too many families have had to leave their homes and their country to repay microfinance institutions,” said LICADHO director Naly Pilorge. “Now, with tens of thousands of former migrant workers unable to work in Thailand due to COVID-19, the government and MFIs must help these borrowers by suspending repayments and returning land titles.”
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| Listen to audio version in Khmer |
Released in August 2019
More than 2 million Cambodians currently have a loan with a microfinance institution, or MFI. Levels of debt have skyrocketed in recent years, leading to a number of human rights abuses, including coerced land sales, child labour, debt-driven migration, and bonded labour, according to a joint report from the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT).
Collateral Damage: Land Losses and Abuses in Cambodia’s Microfinance Sector details the size and scope of Cambodia’s MFI sector and seeks to highlight the human rights abuses that researchers discovered. The research spans 10 communes in 4 provinces as well as Phnom Penh and features seven detailed case studies of abuses, chosen from the 28 MFI clients who suffered human rights abuses that were interviewed by researchers.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 7.87 MBs) |
Released in October 2018
Until proven guilty, Cambodian citizens accused of a crime have the right to be presumed innocent, under Cambodian and international law. For most charged persons, this should mean being given the chance to avoid pre-trial detention through bail proceedings.
This briefing paper, mainly based on LICADHO’s extensive work in the prison system, demonstrates how rampant under-use of bail proceedings results in excessively long periods of pre-trial detention which have far reaching consequences for the lives of individuals, families and communities. For the purposes of this report, LICADHO defines pre-trial detention as those persons detained who have not yet been to trial.
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| Download this report in Khmer (PDF, 1.11 MBs) |


