Poverty in Cambodia is caused by the failure of the government to combat corruption. The national budget allocated for the social sector – including health, education and rural development – is lost every year, thus putting human lives at great risk of neglect, deprivation and exposure to violence. Among the victims of neglect, deprivation and violence are women, female youths and children because of gender inequalities, discrimination and extreme forms of abuse such as sexual abuse, rape and trafficking.

It’s monsoon season here and dawns often bring a sodden feeling and gray rain.But on August 4, when Mu Sochua arrived at the Phnom Penh courthouse, the air crackled with intensity.As the world knows by now, the Cambodian member of parliament and internationally-renowned leader in women’s rights was given a guilty verdict for defamation against Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, leader of the majority Cambodian People’s Party.
To read the complete article please visit Cambodia NEWS website.

Little of that has silenced Mu Sochua, a female parliamentarian belonging to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party. She has fired verbal salvos at the Hun Sen administration in her quest for justice. It is part of an over two-decade-long commitment to improve her war-torn country, beginning in 1991 with a fight for women’s rights.Sochua was only 18 years old and a fresh high school graduate when the U.S. war in Vietnam spread to Cambodia in 1972, plunging a country that had remained neutral into a conflict that lasted 20 years.

Although the number of media organisations have clearly increased since 1993, after the elections overseen by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia that ended decades of conflict, many Cambodians still see journalism as a 'man's world'. The Cambodian media are "still a very male-dominated industry," says Cambodia's English-language daily 'The Phnom Penh Post' editor-in-chief Seth Meixner.
For further reading, please visit IPS News website.