Human Trafficking in [Cambodia] [other countries]Street Children in [Cambodia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Cambodia |
Child Prostitution The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children In the first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2009
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CAUTION: The following links and accompanying text have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** But, now the bad news. The South
China Morning Post had a horrific story today entitled "Endless
Nightmare," which tells of child prostitution in the poverty stricken
corners of Cambodia. The story is the kind that makes you want to sell
everything you have, take the money, and move there to do something about
stopping the unspeakable violence against innocent children as young as four,
five, and six. Right in Phnom Penh and surrounding areas paedophiles are ravaging the bodies, minds, and spirits
of these precious children. Many of these criminals are foreigners,
some are Cambodians themselves. The article tells of four, middle aged
Frenchmen scouting the area. A local, 12 year-old tells the author that
these men, "They like girls...small girls." And he points to
a mother who will rent her daughter "for the price of a hamburger."
The SCMP continues, "Today,
with tourism increasing by 30 percent a year and many police, judges, and
politicians taking bribes, the illegal sex trade is booming. Suffer
little Children: Legacies of War in Cambodia Endless nightmare [PDF] khmernz.blogspot.com/2008/03/suffer-little-children-legacies-of-war.html www.humanityfocus.org/research/080214article.pdf Despite a crackdown, widespread
corruption and dire poverty mean campaigners are fighting a losing battle
against child prostitution At 12, Pov
knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the
seasoned prostitute he has become. "They like girls," he said,
gesturing to four middle‐aged Frenchmen. "Small girls." He
also knows a sun‐blackened and tattered woman a few metres
away. She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia's choking capital is a slow‐moving
river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm in arm, tourists gaze at one
of Asia's most beautiful sunsets and children like Pov
ply their trade, zeroing in on what they call rich, foreign "lady‐boys",
or gay men. On Sisowath
Quay, in front of the city's best restaurants, Pov
and his friends eat a pizza bought by a tourist. Like many of the street
children here, he is an unsettling mix of naivety and knowingness, his hand
resting on my thigh as he pleads for the name of my hotel. He and his friends
are desperate because he knows that most of the foreign men come for girls.
When a photographer begins to take pictures, the boys drop their sales pitch,
curl up like cats on the Quay wall, and smile shyly like children. ***
ARCHIVES *** www.ecpat.net/A4A_2005/PDF/EAP/Global_Monitoring_Report-CAMBODIA.pdf Social inequality, poor access to
land, limited resources for families to meet the needs of their children,
low-quality education, deficient social services and weakened institutions -
problems exacerbated by 20 years of war – have contributed to the high
vulnerability of Cambodian children to commercial sexual exploitation, which
has become a means of survival for some children and their families. Although the Draft Education Law
states that nine years’ basic education in public schools is provided free of
charge, primary level schooling is still not compulsory; and though the
enrolment rate for primary education has increased in recent years, drop-out
and repetitive rates are still high. This is due to several factors,
including indirect costs of education, limited financial resources of
families to support their children’s education, and poor quality of
education. Low levels of education have made children more vulnerable to
child labour and commercial sexual exploitation as
they are often expected to contribute to the family income. U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - Sexual intercourse with a person
under age 15 is illegal; however, child prostitution
and trafficking in children occurred. In 2000 the government adopted a five‑year
plan against child sexual exploitation that emphasized prevention through
information dissemination and protection by law enforcement. A local NGO
reported having investigated 29 cases of child sexual exploitation, which
resulted in the arrest of 5 foreign pedophiles. Three perpetrators were charged
and awaiting trial. Two pedophiles were sentenced to 15 and 10 years'
imprisonment, respectively. Child rape remained a serious issue; a local NGO
reported 65 cases of rape involving children below 10 years of age during the
year; the youngest victim was 4 years old. The illegal purchase and sale of
children for prostitution was a
problem. During the year raids on brothels rescued underage girls who were
trafficked for prostitution. SECTION 6
WORKER RIGHTS – [d] The
constitution prohibits forced or bonded child labor; however, forced child
labor was a serious problem in the commercial sex industry. Law enforcement
agencies failed to combat child prostitution
in a sustained, consistent manner. Widespread corruption, lack of
transparency, inadequate resources, and staffing shortages remained the most
challenging obstacles. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2000 [63] While welcoming the enactment
of special legislation to combat sexual exploitation and the adoption of a
five-year Plan of Action against Sexual Exploitation of Children (2000-2004)
and other related measures in this area, the Committee expresses its concern
at the widespread phenomena of child prostitution and the sale and
trafficking of children; the inadequate enforcement of the new legislation on
these issues; and the shortage of trained people and institutions to provide
rehabilitation to the victims. Human
Trafficking On the Rise in Cambodia www.voanews.com/english/archive/2009-03/2009-03-23-voa20.cfm?CFID=288388149&CFTOKEN=30064180&jsessionid=8830f48d7367141b8a6ee5815724b2d30393
TRAFFICKING VICTIMS ARE ENSLAVED,
TORTURED -
Trafficking victims in Cambodia typically endure years of torture and
abuse. Vann Sina
was lured from her village with an invitation to a Christmas party when she
was just 13 years old. When she arrived in Phnom Penh she was locked in
an underground cellar. She says she
was beaten a lot and had to serve many clients. She says that if she
refused she was tortured with electric shocks or forced to eat hot chilies.
She says that if she did not receive 15 or more clients every day she was
starved and beaten. - htcp Cambodian
Girls Driven to Prostitution www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/youngcambodianprostitution-01272009122306.html
The girl from Prey Veng province has worked as a prostitute in the Cambodian
capital for five months. Hard times, she said, have brought her here to earn
money for her widowed mother and three younger siblings. “I am unhappy with myself, but I pity my
mother. No girl wants to do this horrible work,” the 15-year-old, who asked
not to be named, said in an interview as she looked for business near the Suriya Supermarket.
“Sometimes, I get only one client in two or three days. Rising living costs are forcing
more Cambodian girls under 18 into prostitution in urban areas such as Phnom
Penh to support their families in the countryside. The girls, spotted easily from around 8
p.m. as they scout urban streets and parks for customers, say they lack the
education to find other work. A dangerous trade - Several
Cambodian girls who agreed to be interviewed said they engage in sex work
despite its dangers because they cannot afford to quit. “Clients take me to guesthouses. I get
U.S. $10 per night. They gang-rape me and beat me,” another girl, 17, from Svay Rieng province, said. Increasing poverty - Lim Mony, program manager for women’s issues at the nonprofit
group ADHOC, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, said the
number of girls and women involved in sex work is increasing because of
higher living costs and the lure of modern luxuries. “Voluntary sex work by girls on the
streets is difficult to define. Many of these girls first were lured and
tricked into being sex workers by traffickers. Then, because of that, they
began voluntarily selling their bodies. Other women have been voluntarily
engaged in prostitution from the start,” she said. If This
Isn’t Slavery, What Is? www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04kristof.html?_r=1
Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her
first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in
Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until
finally the girl acquiesced. She was
kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all
times except when with customers.
Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like
many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she
could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity
four times. Pross
paid savagely each time she let a potential customer slip away after looking
her over. “I was beaten every day,
sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, adding that she was sometimes
also subjected to electric shocks twice in the same day. - htcp But, now the bad news. The
South China Morning Post had a horrific story today entitled "Endless
Nightmare," which tells of child prostitution in the poverty stricken
corners of Cambodia. The story is the kind that makes you want to sell
everything you have, take the money, and move there to do something about
stopping the unspeakable violence against innocent children as young as four,
five, and six. Right in Phnom Penh and surrounding areas paedophiles are ravaging the bodies, minds, and spirits
of these precious children. Many of these criminals are foreigners,
some are Cambodians themselves. The article tells of four, middle aged
Frenchmen scouting the area. A local, 12 year-old tells the author that
these men, "They like girls...small girls." And he points to
a mother who will rent her daughter "for the price of a hamburger."
The SCMP continues, "Today,
with tourism increasing by 30 percent a year and many police, judges, and
politicians taking bribes, the illegal sex trade is booming. Suffer
little Children: Legacies of War in Cambodia Endless nightmare [PDF] khmernz.blogspot.com/2008/03/suffer-little-children-legacies-of-war.html www.humanityfocus.org/research/080214article.pdf Despite a crackdown, widespread
corruption and dire poverty mean campaigners are fighting a losing battle
against child prostitution At 12, Pov
knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the
seasoned prostitute he has become. "They like girls," he said,
gesturing to four middle‐aged Frenchmen. "Small girls." He
also knows a sun‐blackened and tattered woman a few metres
away. She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia's choking capital is a slow‐moving
river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm in arm, tourists gaze at one
of Asia's most beautiful sunsets and children like Pov
ply their trade, zeroing in on what they call rich, foreign "lady‐boys",
or gay men. On Sisowath
Quay, in front of the city's best restaurants, Pov
and his friends eat a pizza bought by a tourist. Like many of the street
children here, he is an unsettling mix of naivety and knowingness, his hand
resting on my thigh as he pleads for the name of my hotel. He and his friends
are desperate because he knows that most of the foreign men come for girls.
When a photographer begins to take pictures, the boys drop their sales pitch,
curl up like cats on the Quay wall, and smile shyly like children. Cambodia
launches tourism documents to combat human trafficking The strategies require owners of
hotels, guesthouses, and other establishments to inform tourism police or
relevant officials of any suspicious activities, he said. The plan to promote policies on child-safe
tourism was designed with technical and financial support from the
International Labor Organization (ILO). Undercover in SE
Asia's brothels Reporter Thembi
Mutch spent seven weeks in Thailand and Cambodia,
finding out what life is like for children trafficked into the region's
thriving sex industry. TALES OF TRAFFICKING - As for the trafficked children,
their stories defy words. A
15-year-old girl in Cambodia said her parents had sold her to a man for her virginity.
The man had drugged and raped her whilst she was unconscious. After a week in the hotel room with this
man, she was sold onto a brothel. There, she was gang-raped by 10 men posing
as clients. She escaped, by hiding in
a rubbish bin, but was then tricked into prostitution again, staying for
three years. Eventually she escaped, and knocked on the door of some
strangers, who cared for her. NGOs Work
To Eradicate Human Trafficking, Help Victims U.S.-funded nongovernmental
organizations around the world are working to prevent human trafficking,
provide resources to victims and arrest and prosecute child-sex offenders.
From Africa to Europe to Asia, initiatives are raising worldwide awareness of
the illegal practice of human trafficking. PREVENTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING - In Cambodia, the ChildSafe network, created and managed by the NGO Friends
International, helps crack down on child-sex tourism by training drivers of moto-taxis to identify and report suspicious behavior by
tourists who may intend to exploit children.
The ChildSafe project has trained 36 moto-taxi drivers and employees of 25 guesthouses to
identify and protect children who are at risk of commercial sexual
exploitation in Sihanoukville, a beach resort town. Saving Cambodia--one child at a time In April 2003, Sayaka
Murata, then a college junior, met two sisters, ages 6 and 12, at a child prostitution
shelter in Phnom Penh. She assumed they were the children of members of the
staff. She was wrong. "I was
shocked to learn the ages of the residents of the shelter," she recalls.
"The youngest girl was 5. They all worked at brothels." A year later, she went back to the
same shelter only to find the sisters gone. They had been forced back into a
brothel to pay off their parents' debts. The tragic news reaffirmed Murata's
commitment to help abused girls in Cambodia. Anderson
Cooper Tackles Child Prostitution, Elephants, and Giant Squids CNN journalist Anderson Cooper and
his news crew recently spent a week in Cambodia and Bangkok reporting on the
trafficking in humans and animals. One extremely good aspect that came out of
all this was the profiling of Somaly Mam, a Cambodian woman who was sold into prostitution as
a child and who escaped and now rescues other girls, many just five or six
years old, and most of them, sadly enough, already infected with AIDS. Cambodia taxi
drivers fight abuse The Cambodian seaside town of Sihanoukville has adopted a new strategy to deter sex
tourists. Motorbike taxi drivers have
been enlisted as the first line of defence for the
town's children. When
‘Peacekeeping’ Equals Rape Their report on Cambodia is
especially disturbing. A UN Peacekeeping force of 100,000 invaded Cambodia in
the early 1990’s, causing the sex trade to skyrocket. Brothels, massage parlours, the sale of girls from rural areas into these
torture ‘palaces of pleasure,’ a massive increase in child prostitution, and
AIDS. Prostitutes www.childexploitation.org/prostitution9.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Cambodian activist who rescues sex slaves is honored in U.S. www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/31/america/NA_GEN_US_Sex_Slavery_Activist.php At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Some of the girls Mam's group rescues die of AIDS or are sold back into
prostitution by their families, but others leave the sex trade for good. Cambodia gets
tough on child sex trade Cambodian police this year have
arrested at least 12 foreigners on charges of sexually abusing children -
more than twice the amount snagged all of last year. In addition to three Americans, they've
caught four Germans, an elderly Swiss man, a Belgium national, and at least
three Vietnamese nationals who helped the foreigners procure children. Former Child Prostitute Finds New Hope - The Life of a 13-Year-Old in Cambodia abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1826673&page=1 www.khmerdynasty.com/News/article/sid=1212.html Deep in the Cambodian countryside
hundreds of miles from the city and years behind the modern world the life of
a 13-year-old girl seems simple. But for Sophon
(not her real name) life wasn't always so sweet. Her country, Cambodia, has
the distinction of being Asia's sex trafficking capital. Like many young
girls, Sophon was sold into prostitution by her
own, desperately poor family when she was just six years old. Trapping
Cambodia's sex tourists After a long, tense wait, a
grinning teenaged boy opens the door and pushes in two young girls. One says she is seven years old. The other
is nine. Rebuilding
Cambodia: one woman at a time Thyda looks like any other young girl –
only she’s lived through trauma most of us could never imagine. At the age of
12 she was told that she needed to make money in order to buy medicine for
her sick grandfather. Because she was considered to be very beautiful, her
mother sold her to a friend for $300. This woman then sold her to a
high-ranking Cambodian official for $800. She stayed with him for three hours
on that first night. Thyda was moved all over the
country, being resold over and over again. The Protection Project - Cambodia [DOC] FORMS OF TRAFFICKING - Trafficking victims usually
come from poor, rural areas, such as Battambang, Cham, Kandal, Kompomg, Prey Veng, Svey Rieng, and Takeo, or from urban slums. The cities where women and
children are most commonly sexually exploited are Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, and
the developing border areas of Banteay Meanchey and Battambang. Poipet, located on the border with Thailand, is a
trafficking hub. There, brothels and bars cater to Cambodian and Thai
men. As many as one-third of women
working in the commercial sex industry in Cambodia are under Trafficking victims usually come
from poor, rural areas, such as Battambang, Cham, Kandal, Kompomg, Prey Veng, Svey Rieng, and Takeo, or from urban slums. The cities where women and
children are most commonly sexually exploited are Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, and
the developing border areas of Banteay Meanchey and Battambang. Poipet, located on the border with Thailand, is a
trafficking hub. There, brothels and bars cater to Cambodian and Thai
men. As many as one-third of women
working in the commercial sex industry in Cambodia are underage.age. ECPAT: Fifth Report on implementation of the Agenda for
Action [DOC] www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/publication/other/english/Doc_page/ecpat_5th_a4a_2001_full.doc At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [B]
COUNTRY UPDATES – CAMBODIA – The Cambodia National Council for Children (CNCC) created a
Sub-Committee on Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation in December 2000 to
promote and coordinate the implementation of the Five Year Plan of Action
Against Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Children. It is chaired by the
Ministry of the Interior and comprises 14 members. However, the
implementation of the plan has reportedly been limited and NGOs have
expressed disappointment that the government has not committed financial
resources for activities in the Plan. Report
by Special Rapporteur [DOC] [32] NGOs reported particular problems, including
bribery and corruption in the legal system, lack of understanding of the law,
court delays, lack of police cooperation, insufficient budget for investigation
of cases in the provinces, and limited resources. An absence of
laws prohibiting child prostitution and unclear laws concerning trafficking
means that there is no special protection for the increasing number of child
victims of prostitution. [34] It is reported that some
of the brothels where children work are frequented by government officials,
and until this is addressed, genuine progress to tackle commercial sexual
exploitation and trafficking of children will not be made. Khmer girls'
trafficking ordeal "At first I refused to have
sex with men. Then I was beaten so badly I had to hide my face for a month,
until it healed. Then I was told again I would have to sleep with the
customers. I knew if I refused I would be beaten again. I had no choice but
to agree." Hitting
Slavery Where It Hurts "Nothing compares to the
deadness in the eyes of a kid in a brothel," Haugen, 40, says. "In
Rwanda, the dead were already gone. In the brothels of Cambodia, they are the
living dead." They mapped a systematic, and
highly profitable, trade in innocents. Kids from remote rural areas are
promised work or treats in distant cities by slave dealers, who sell them to
brothels for up to $1,000. Sex with these kids costs $30 compared with $5 for
an adult prostitute in Cambodia.
"Our investigators came into Svay Pak,
and within ten minutes pimps came up saying 'Do you want small-small? I can
get small-small,'" says Sharon Cohn, the head of IJM's
antitrafficking unit. "It was
unbelievable--kids as young as 5." Dateline goes undercover with a
human rights group to expose sex trafficking in The
Modern Scourge of Sex Slavery [photo caption] Cambodian policeman escorts
11-year-old Vietnamese girl from brothel in Toul Kork red-light district of Phnom Penh: Six girls from
11-13 years of age were rescued from brothel that offered only young
children. Trafficked from Facts
about child prostitution in Cambodia childrights-cambodia.org/child-sex-facts.htm
Cambodia Witnesses Rise In Child Prostitution www.zeenews.com/links/articles.asp?aid=1487&sid=WOM Cambodia is enjoying its longest
period of peace and stability in 30 years following the surrender of the last
of insurgent Khmer Rouge Forces in late 1998. As a result, its tourism
industry is booming. But among the
400,000 tourists expected to arrive in Cambodia in 2000, nearly twice the
previous year, are what child protection workers say an increasing number of
foreign child sex predators. At risk are girls as young as 10 years old
brought in from the Cambodian countryside or smuggled across the Vietnamese
border to service a seemingly insatiable child sex industry centered in Phnom
Penh. EU Concerned
about Child Prostitution in Cambodia In a non-binding resolution
European lawmakers underlined their "preoccupation with child
prostitution in United Nations' Efforts On Human Trafficking: Raising International Awareness 4. UNICEF INNOCENTI RESEARCH CENTER:
CHILD TRAFFICKING RESEARCH HUB - FACT SHEET: COMMERCIAL SEXUAL
EXPLOITATION - FACTS AND FIGURES - An estimated 2 million
children, the majority of them girls, are sexually exploited in the
multi-billion dollar commercial sex industry. In Cambodia, a third of those
in prostitution are children under 18 years of age. [page 40] THE SCOPE AND NATURE OF
THE PROBLEM IN THE EAP REGION - As with trafficking, it is difficult to estimate the number of
children and women being exploited in the commercial sex industry. The
highest concentration of child sex workers is believed to be in the Greater
Mekong sub-region, which consists of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand,
Viet Nam and the Yunnan and Guangxi
provinces of China. In some of these countries, children are reported to
account for around one-third of all sex workers. A survey in Cambodia found
that 30 – 35 per cent of sex workers were between 12-17 years of age.v Yet the problem also exists beyond the sub-region.
In Indonesia, 60 per cent of registered prostitutes were found to be between
the ages of 15 to 20 years of age. These figures are mere indications of the
extent of the problem in the region. “Welcome to the
Rape Camp” - Sexual Exploitation and the Internet in Cambodia [PDF] [page 5] Child prostitution is common in
Cambodia. Approximately one third of all women or girls in prostitution in
Cambodia are under age 17. One study counted 2,291 underage girls in
prostitution, some younger than 12 years of age (Business News
Review--Cambodia, 12 July 1999). Another report claims that there are 16,000
girls in prostitution who are under age 18 (Cochane,
10 November 1999). Throughout the decade of the 1990s in Cambodia, the age of
girls in prostitution steadily declined. In 1992 the youngest known girls in
prostitution were 18, but one year later, in 1993, 15 year olds were found in
prostitution (Cambodian Women’s Development Association, 1992 and 1993). The
next year, in 1994, a survey found that 35 percent of women and girls in
prostitution were under the age of 18 and some were as young as 12 years of
age (Cambodian Women’s Development Association, February 1994). By 1995,
another survey found that approximately 31 percent were under age 17 (Kang
and Phally, 1995:3). World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children www.usemb.se/children/csec/feature5.html [Feature 3: Cambodia] ARIS STORY - By day the young girls watch
television soap operas, giggle and pore over the pages of fashion magazines.
But as dusk descends on Cambodias brothels, the
young girls begin to touch up their make-up and adjust their stylish blouses
and short skirts. They are preparing to entertain men, both local and foreign,
who pay for an hour or a night of sex with them. While research on child sex
workers in only beginning in Cambodia, experts and international organisations agree on one thing: the problem is growing
rapidly. More than one-third of all
sex workers in Cambodia are estimated to be children, mostly girls aged 12 to
17, or nearly 20,000 children. The demand for younger girls, especially
virgins, is accelerating in response to growing customer demand for AIDS-free
sex, coupled with the illusion that younger girls are unlikely to be
HIV-positive. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Cambodia] [other countries]Street Children in [Cambodia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Cambodia