Child Trafficking in Cambodia

Background on Human and Child Trafficking 

According to the United Nations (n.d.), the most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation (79%). The victims of sexual exploitation are predominately women and girls, and worldwide, almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children. While trafficking seems to imply people moving across continents, most exploitation takes place close to home, with data showing intra-regional and domestic trafficking as the major forms of trafficking in persons (United Nations: Office on Drugs and Crime, n.d.). As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit Cambodian men, women, and children in forced labor and sex trafficking within Cambodia and abroad. Traffickers also subject victims from other countries to trafficking in Cambodia. Additionally, they use Cambodia as a transit point to exploit victims from other countries to trafficking elsewhere in Asia (U.S. Department of State, 2021). Traffickers force many to work on fishing vessels, in agriculture, in construction, in factories, and in domestic service – often through debt-based coercion – or exploit them in sex trafficking.

Children from impoverished families are vulnerable to forced labor, often with the complicity of their families, including in domestic service and forced begging or street vending (U.S. Department of State, 2021). All of Cambodia’s 25 provinces are sources for child trafficking. Sex trafficking is largely clandestine; Cambodian children move from rural areas to cities and tourist destinations, where criminals exploit them in sex trafficking in brothels and, more frequently, clandestine sex establishments at beer gardens, massage parlors, salons, karaoke bars, retail spaces, and non-commercial sites (U.S. Department of State, 2021). In recent years, the rapidly growing and largely unregulated presence of Chinese casinos, entertainment establishments, and other commercial enterprises in Preah Sihanouk province led to an increase of local sex trafficking and forced labor among Cambodian women and girls. However, Cambodia’s 2020 ban on online gambling and the subsequent shuttering of many Chinese-owned casinos and other entertainment establishments has reduced such trafficking (U.S. Department of State, 2021).

Cambodian men form the largest source of demand for children exploited in sex trafficking; however, men from elsewhere in Asia, Australia, Europe, South Africa, and the United States travel to Cambodia to engage in child sex tourism, increasingly facilitated through social media contact (U.S. Department of State, 2021). Thousands of urban children left behind by families migrating abroad for work are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking and forced labor. The prevalence of child sex trafficking and child sex tourism reportedly declined in 2020 due to reduced international travel and pandemic-related quarantine requirements. However, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and law enforcement officials reported the pandemic increased incidents of online child sexual exploitation in 2020 (U.S. Department of State, 2021).

Within South-East Asia, Cambodia is one of the hotbeds for trafficking. In Cambodia, most trafficked children end up in the commercial sex industry (Tumlin, 2000). Most of the prostitution-related trafficking occurs in Cambodia, with children comprising a significant proportion of the prostitutes who work in Cambodia, ranging from 15.5%-33%. Cambodia also faces notable problems of children trafficked to enter begging gangs, where about 500 Cambodian children, mostly boys, are known to work for begging gangs in Thailand (Tumlin, 2000).

Children in Cambodia are also trafficked for labor. Generally, these child workers are exposed to extremely hazardous working conditions in construction sites, small shops, factories, or homes. Often these children are treated like slaves (Tumlin, 2000). In Cambodia, the legal provisions relating to trafficking are unclear.  Many offenders may escape prosecution, and crowded court dockets limit the effectiveness of prosecutors. Additionally, children trafficked into Cambodia from other countries are generally jailed as violators of immigration law, as Cambodia lacks an organized repatriation program for these children (Tumlin, 2000).