HumanTrafficking.org | Cambodia International Organization: The Asia Foundation

A web resource for combating human trafficking

Cambodia

The Asia Foundation

Address

The Asia Foundation
House No. 59, St 242 (Okhna Piech)
Sangkat Cahtomuk, Khan Daun Penh
Post Box 536 PTC
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Contact Information

If calling from Cambodia:

Tel: 023 210 431
Fax: 023 217 553

If calling from overseas:

Tel: +855 23 210 431
Fax: +855 23 217 553

Website

http://www.asiafoundation.org

Email

tafcb@cb.asiafound.org

Activities

The Asia Foundation's counter-trafficking programs are designed to combat the issues of trafficking in a number of different ways ranging from direct victim and shelter support, safe migration, and school-based education programs designed to raise awareness of the dangers of trafficking to young people, training for counseling service providers, and reintegration vocational training for victims. The Foundation also encourages cooperation and information-sharing among NGOs engaged in counter-trafficking activities and through a Foundation-managed project has developed the multi-lingual countertrafficking website, www.TIPinAsia.info, designed to serve as a consolidated information hub for NGOs working in this field.

Over the years, The Asia Foundation's countertrafficking programs have built upon the Foundation's successes and lessons learned from rule of law, human rights, community-level and national-level legal advocacy, and other governancerelated programs in south and southeast Asia. Experience and professional connections from these programs have provided an excellent base for counter-trafficking programs that address the legal dimensions of the human trafficking problem in Cambodia.

The Asia Foundation supports a multi-pronged NGO strategy that provides legal aid for victims of trafficking, as well as shelter services, vocational training and reintegration assistance. The Foundation supports the Cambodian Defenders Project’s CDP’s Center Against Trafficking to enable CDP lawyers to develop their skills in handling trafficking cases and in providing high-quality, pro-bono legal services to victims. Of the ten trafficking cases that have led to convictions, CDP has represented five of them.

Research conducted by the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC) on attitudes of the police and courts toward trafficking victims provided the basis for strategically targeted new initiatives. These include supporting advocacy groups to monitor courts to promote due process in trafficking cases, and efforts to reduce judicial corruption. The Foundation supports the CWCC, Hagar, AFESIP, to provide shelter and assist hundreds of trafficking survivors, providing both women and children with basic medical care, counseling, literacy skills, and vocational training. To ensure vocational training programs train survivors in marketable skills, the Foundation provides technical assistance to CWCC to research the local employment market for its shelters in Phnom Penh and Banteay Meancheay.

The Foundation also supports the Coalition Against the Sexual Exploitation of Children (COSECAM) to launch a nationwide, market-sensitive vocational training network among organizations providing shelter, counseling, and vocational training to victims of trafficking.

Other programs support the Healthcare Center for Children (HCC), to replicate sustainable and effective community watch networks in three provinces, including one to protect child victims at the point of exploitation in a border province with a high rate of trafficking. The Foundation also supports Mith Samlanh/Friends, to reach out to migrant girls and women fleeing abuse and looking for work as they arrive at taxi and bus stations in Phnom Penh, providing them with information on housing, employment or training opportunities before they are approached by traffickers.¹