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Government Action Plans

Government of Cambodia's Plan of Action To Prevent, Protect, Prosecute and Reintegrate

Prevention

Public Awareness: Within the Government, the Human Rights Commission has taken the lead to raise awareness on the subject of trafficking. The Commission has conducted extensive and valuable research throughout the country, organized an national workshop, and proactively contributed to interpretations and implementation of the trafficking law. The Government also provides shelters and schooling for orphans and street children to keep them away from traffickers. The ministry of Social, Labor and Veterans Affairs runs several such institutions. The Government has included education on children's rights in the school curriculum, which is another way of creating awareness among the masses about laws that exist to protect children and victims of trafficking. Many Government development projects, socially the ones financed by international donors, focus on poverty alleviation, which in turn reduces the vulnerability of women and children to sold to traffickers for money. The Cambodian Migration and Development Committee (CMDC) is Battambang province organizes vocational training for 'beer and vine' girls, who are not prostitutes but would be vulnerable to trickery into that industry.

Protection/Assistance

Since 1992, the National AIDS Commission of the Ministry of Health has cooperated extensively with NGOs to provide AIDS education and health services to prostitutes through local clinics. These clinics are designed to keep women and girls who are in the sex business, as safe and healthy as possible and through counseling encourage them to leave prostitution. Another protection strategy that is being implemented by the NGOs and supported by the Government is "peer counseling' in brothel areas. The NGO workers educated small team of prostitutes about basic hygiene as well as benefits of mutual support among sex workers. These women are then encouraged to spread the message to other sex workers.

The Ministry of Women's and Veterans' Affairs (MWVA) was established in 1998 by the Royal Government of Cambodia as the national mechanism for advancing the role and the status of women and veterans in Cambodia. In 2002, MWVA adopted the following concept paper on the "Strengthening Mechanisms and Strategies to Counter Trafficking." This document is viewable using Adobe Reader.

See Five Year Plan Against Sexual Exploitation of Children (2000-2004) submitted by the Cambodian National Council For Children and adopted by Council Minister on 17 March 2000. http://www.ecpat-esp.org/documentacion/planes-nacionales/Camboya.pdf

In 2000, the Government adopted a 5-year plan against child sexual exploitation that emphasized prevention through information dissemination and protection by law enforcement. In 2001, a national workshop assessed the national plan's progress and priorities for action. In 2002, the Government established mechanisms for monitoring and reporting on the national plan with all relevant ministries and provincial authorities.