Human Trafficking in [Cambodia] [other countries]Street Children in [Cambodia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Cambodia |
Child Prostitution The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of
Children The |
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Gender, Country (Cambodia), and Years Missing 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. 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. Cambodia's 55,000 prostitutes are
children under the age of 16. The oldest girls in the sex industry today are
teenagers, says Sao Chhoeurth, who works with AFESIP, a French NGO that rescues and rehabilitates child
prostitute. Cambodian
activist who rescues sex slaves is honored in U.S. 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 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. ECPAT:
Fifth Report on implementation of the Agenda for Action [DOC] [B]
COUNTRY UPDATES – 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
Cambodia
Witnesses Rise In Child Prostitution 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 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 [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). 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