Editor’s note: This is the conclusion of a two-part article about child trafficking in Cambodia. Read part 1 here .
Child Trafficking
Most NGO’s (non-government organizations) use the U.N. Trafficking Protocol definition of child trafficking: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of any person under the age of eighteen for the purposes of sexual or labor exploitation, forced labor or slavery.
In Cambodia, widespread corruption and poverty combined with a weak judicial and police force makes it difficult to prosecute child traffickers. But, big strides have been made with shelters established, successful prosecutions and growing awareness. In the community Riverkids works in, child trafficking is generally in three forms: illegal adoptions, child labor, and child prostitution. Trafficking is coercion and exploitation. Child trafficking is the separation of a child from family, culture, and a normal childhood primarily for profit.
Child trafficking for labor is when a family sells a child for exploitative labor. Exploitation can mean the child is too young to be working full-time, or that the work is dangerous for a child. Work that may include selling flowers, candy or food at night, often standing in the middle of busy roads, selling to white tourists.
The subject of child trafficking is an oft misunderstood subject in the “Western world,” where imaginations and misunderstandings conjure up images of kidnappers, high ransoms that can’t be met, and a child or young woman getting smuggled off and sold to a wealthy man in a foreign country. Whether or not this actually happens, I cannot say.
The real faces of child trafficking come from the slums of poor villages, along the riverfront of Phnom Penh, or Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Someone approaches a family and offers to make their problems go away by giving them money for their starving child, and a promise that the home the child is going to will provide for them.
Desperate parents believe what is told to them, last kisses and hugs are given, and a child disappears.
The child’s new “home” may turn out to be a “baby warehouse.” The type of place desperate “Western” parents go to adopt a child with fewer adoption costs, and without the hassles of so much red tape. Instead of going through state approvals and agencies with fees, Americans, Brits, French, and others fly into a country, go to the “orphanage,” and pick out the child that they want — often oblivious to the real situation, to the real face of child trafficking.
The Dangerous and Touchy Subject of Sex Workers
Family is important in Cambodia, but often the pressures and problems of living in a developing country work against a family. Women with no education or training become sex workers in order to bring home money and food, just as their mothers before them did. It is generational. A mother sells her daughter into sex trafficking, because it is all that she knows. The mother survived it, and in spite of how awful she knows it will be for her daughter, she knows her daughter will survive it as well.
But where does the cycle stop? How can families be saved in such a culture?
This is the other face of child trafficking — the scarier and more terrifying face. A child is sold by his or her parents to a trafficker, who in turn sells the child, or really, the body of the child, for sexual purposes. The child is not loved, not given a good home, but rented out for sexual abuse.
Cambodia is notorious for child prostitution. The worst places have been shut down, but foreign pedophiles still use the country as a corrupt and cheap haven, while local demand for prostitutes has grown for younger teenage sex workers. Do not envision dark seedy streets or acts that occur in back rooms, away from the eyes of the world; it happens everywhere. In just a short visit to a nightclub or even a high-end restaurant in Phnom Penh and you can see it all play out where older (foreign) men are seen dancing with much younger, provocatively dressed girls and women. Massage parlors will offer additional services for an extra dollar.
I met with a masseuse in one such massage storefront. Through a translator I asked her about her family and education. She had no education and could not read or write. Her husband has a small business, but it isn’t enough to support the family. She has three children, and she proudly told me she works so that her children can attend school. (State school is not free here.)
She has been a sex worker for more than eight years, starting just after her youngest child was born. She occasionally is hired just for a massage, but most customers come in for the other services. For a massage she earns about one US dollar. For a “happy ending” (the expression she uses although she does not speak English) a customer pays about $1.50, of which half goes to the madam. The sex worker herself only earns $0.75 for each client, and on a good day earns only $3.50.
Many of the Riverkids children come from families where a parent, sibling or relative has been involved in sex work. Abusive families are also more likely to allow abuse of their children. Either parents approach the trafficker or the families are tricked by promises of a good job for their daughter. When the parents are arranging the sale, the girl usually co-operates because she believes it is her duty.
For boys, sex work is usually limited to occasional street work, not brothels. The sold child is watched closely and often beaten, drugged and raped into submission. Once the children have been broken, they’re usually allowed to visit their families and are paid wages.
Sex work has become a comparatively lucrative job for young girls in the Riverkids community. A foreign “boyfriend” can support an entire family, versus the initial $200-$400 for virginity, with $1-$5 a time subsequently.
Child trafficking and sex trafficking are forever intrinsically linked.
“We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.
We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.” – The Family: A Proclamation to the World
Ending Child and Sex Trafficking
What can be done to end child and sex trafficking in countries like Cambodia? For individuals abroad, the first step is ensuring that any and all international adoptions are done legally and from reputable and trustworthy agencies and orphanages.
Second, care should be taken to support companies that sell “fair trade” products, ensuring that child slaves were not used in the production. Third, we must support organizations that are working to end the evils on the ground in-country.
In-country, the battle against sin is real. Families need to be educated on the dangers of trafficking, HIV, malnutrition, and much more. Children need access to affordable schools where they can get an education so that they can get jobs that will get them out of poverty and vulnerability.
Families need alternative forms of income so that they do not to turn to selling children. Women need access to vocational training so that they can find safer employment than sex work. Men need to be educated and taught to not take advantage of women. Families need food.
The fight is long, but Riverkids, along with many other NGO’s are winning small battles daily. These organizations need the all the support and assistance they can get.
At Riverkids you will find several programs starting with the after-school tuition program. High-risk children usually don’t attend school or are far behind their peers. The classes begin with 25 children, a teacher, a social worker and a housemother recruited from the community and trained in child care. As the children gain confidence and skills academically, our social worker and housemother will build ties with their families and the community. When the children have reached the necessary skill level they are moved into a state school program.
The next program is a kindergarten for up to 20 small children. They run in double sessions twice a day for up to 40 children, and bring in parents or older siblings for part-time work as assistants while they are being trained in child care as peer educators for their own community. Kindergarten is vital because it gives children from the slums a real chance to excel in school later, frees up their parents’ time for work, and helps encourage better parenting. Parental involvement is encouraged at Riverkids — again, the goal is to keep families together.
For teenagers and pre-teens, there is the “Get Ready” program. Depending on the population and needs of the slum, classes start with just one teenage girl or boy. This six-month intensive program teaches basic literacy and numeracy, life skills, and vocational skills to get teenagers who have dropped out of school back on their feet. After graduation, the student either reintegrated with other teenagers into state schools or vocational training, or placed in a safe job.
Because orphanages are not always the answer, Riverkids offers weekly boarding and overnight care for children during a family crisis or facing severe abuse at home. Weekly boarding at the Riverkids includes a trained housemother and trust from the community. For children, weekly boarding means a safe shelter near home, so they can still go to the same school and see their family and friends, minimizing their trauma.
In some cases, Riverkids helps identify other families who will provide foster care, keeping a child in their home community.
With families involved in programs, Riverkids is able to encourage them to turn to each other for help and think of solutions on a community level, and to encourage them to think of alternatives to child trafficking. With more positive examples of families that changed, and better financial stability, the child trafficking rate for the slum drops to a level that the community can manage. Families are free to be families, and to provide and care for their own.
A Success Story
Soriya said goodbye to her young daughter, Sovanny, and left her with a neighbor rather than alone in the flimsy shack they rented in the slums.
Soriya was tired and ill, but the rent was due. Her daughter was anxious — a few weeks ago, her mother had come home even more withdrawn than usual because a client had tricked her into a gang rape and then left her battered and penniless. Sovanny,13, had dropped out of school to help out by gathering cans and trash to sell, hoping that the little money she earned might be enough to keep them fed so her mother wouldn’t have to risk her life again.
A Riverkids social worker gave them food to help, but Sovanny didn’t want to go back to school until her mother was safe, and her mother, in despair, couldn’t see an alternative. Riverkids promised to search for donors to sponsor their rent, school and more training.
So Sovanny watched her mother leave that evening, hoping that she would come back safe. Soriya didn’t come home the next morning. Sovanny waited and waited.
Finally, Soriya returned bleeding badly from cuts and bruises. A client had shoved her viciously off his motorbike rather than pay her. Sovanny cleaned her mother’s wounds the best she could, but her mother grew sicker. And they had no money for rent, so they were thrown out by their landlord with the clothes on their back and nothing else.
They went to Riverkids and asked for help.
At this unusual NGO Soriya was given a job working in the “Baby Room,” where she tends to the babies and toddlers who are dropped off by their parents on their way to work. There are clothes to wash, toys to be set out and children to care for. She has income and a way to provide for her daughter. They have moved into a new room away from the slums where she is safe, and her daughter is safe from the world of sex and child trafficking.
Sovanny is back in school. In the afternoon, Sovanny helps the cook in the school’s kitchen. The mother and daughter share lunch with the staff and children, and when dusk settles, they walk home together as a family.
Erin Ann McBride is a writer, dreamer, blogger, and service volunteer. Equal parts Mary Poppins, Carrie Bradshaw, and Mother Theresa, she goes where the wind blows, writes about single life, and is devoted to helping others. You can read more about what defines her and her current travels in Cambodia at the Story of a Nice Mormon Girl.
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