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Strengthening Mechanisms and Strategies to Counter Trafficking

Introduction and overview

"My name is N.Ch After watching a video a woman persuaded me to sleep in her house. Then she sold me to a brothel in Pursat and I was later sold to another brothel in Tuol Kork. There I was tortured by beatings with sticks and electric shocks and made to have sex with 10-15 men a day until I was rescued by police and taken to a centre. Now I am infected by HIV and have no strength to make money for my family." Trafficking in women and children constitutes violence against women and children, and is a breach of their human rights. It is a universal and complex problem, which defies both simplistic analysis and easy answers. Trafficking, according to U.S. Senate Resolution 82 on Trafficking, "involves one or more forms of kidnapping, false imprisonment, rape, battering, forced labour, or slavery-like practices which violate fundamental human rights." The resolution, which was introduced in 1998, states: "Trafficking consists of all acts involved in the recruitment or transportation of persons within or across borders, involving deception, coercion or force, abuse of authority, debt bondage or fraud, for the purpose of placing persons in situations of abuse or exploitation such as forced prostitution, battering and extreme cruelty, sweatshop labor or exploitative domestic servitude." Trafficking is increasing dramatically in Cambodia, where increased economic globalisation has resulted in an increased feminisation of poverty, forcing a greater number of women and young girls to end up as victims of illegal and unscrupulous trafficking networks. Such migration in Cambodia is characterised by movement from rural areas to urban centres and across borders. Women and children's vulnerability and the low status of females generally, combined with poverty and expanding global markets for sex and cheap labour, are at the root of trafficking. The acceptability of violence against women within many societies contributes to a dynamic through which traffickers and clients see women as expendable, and the women themselves are so beaten down that they are unable to resist their captors. The social cost of trafficking to individuals, families, communities and countries is immeasurable, and, more importantly, this form of modern-day slavery is an abuse of fundamental human rights that degrades all our humanity.

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Strengthening Mechanisms and Strategies to Counter Trafficking