Young Khmer-Krom Girls Traps in Women Trafficking Ring

Last updated: 01/11/2009
By Chanh-Thu Kien and Kunthear Kien
Source: kkfyc.org

We had once visited Cambodia and stayed in a hotel that was situated in the heart of Phnom Penh. The hotel seemed quite appropriate at the time and the staff came across quite professional and friendly. Within 3 days of my stay, we realized that a brothel existed on the 3rd floor. In that hotel, girls waited outside various rooms where endless nights of karaoke music blasted through the walls. To us this was quite confronting as we had never witnessed such a scene quite like this. At times we overheard conversations and could identify that most were young to middle aged Cambodian and Vietnamese women. Regretfully, we saw these women as only prostitutes but the article by John Bodreau changed my perspective on these women where we now have an understanding as to how and why these young women are in such positions.

Reading John Bodreau’s article of young teenage girls, one of them (Danh Thi Anh), likely to be a Khmer-Krom girl, was tricked into the sex trade industry and the fact that this article focused on the young adolescents of Kramoun Sar (Rach Gia) city, a heavily Khmer-Krom populated area was quite disturbing for us, not only as Khmer-Krom adolescent but also as a female.

According to this article, many of these young girls as Bodreau coins it, burdened with being “poor and pretty” have been large targets for sex traffickers. These young girls are being offered positions to work in city cafes supposedly earning $120 a month and providing a $60 payment in advance - an offer that these girls simply cannot resist. However rather than venturing out of their towns believing that they are finally beginning to break out of their poverty traps they are smuggled out of the country to Cambodia and forced into the sex trade.

Putting myself into the shoes of these young girls it would be quite understandable why one could not refuse such an offer. Living below the poverty line, where some worked 12 hour days in dumps earning a couple of dollars, anyone in a similar position would jump at the chance of the opportunity to escape the continuous misery. However some jump too soon or too fast not even considering the potential consequences and risks of their decisions. This was clearly demonstrated in the closing statement of Bodreau’s article where one of the young girls rescued from sex traffickers who in response to the question of what might have happened if the rescue had been unsuccessful stated "I don't think about that.....if it had happened, it would have been because it was my destiny. That's the life."

The inability to recognize what could have happened is in fact the reality of thousands of victims in Vietnam as well thousands of other missing persons who may have fallen into the human trafficking scene. It underlies the importance of empowering these young girls and providing them with the education to not just become more conscious of the potential risks in their community but to also equip them with the capabilities and knowledge to take up skilled jobs. Such actions have been provided by a number of programs however, there always seems to be a catch 22 in these situations. Being so poor many of these communities simply cannot afford to sacrifice the time and or money to support their children to attend school or to gain any work experience when the primary goal is for the family to work in order to put food on the table. There is simply not enough time to wait on the returns made in investing in education, there are no long term goals for the future because there is so much uncertainty surrounding the future. There are no long term goals to have an education or to learn a trade because the short term goals of providing those basic needs to survive are not fulfilled.

This therefore brings us to the question, what is the solution? How can we reduce the rate of human trafficking? In order to answer this we need to take a look at who are the victims. As mentioned, and not surprisingly the victims in this case are the poor and hence this suggests that to reduce the number teenage girls forced into the sex trade we need to improve the living standards of the poor. This is a huge task that seems extremely difficult to accomplish as there are so many elements that not only affect the living standards of each population but how they all interact with each other as one complex system.

Having completed a poverty and prosperity economics unit at University we have had a recent interest in development and although recognizing the complexity of the task at hand, we truly believe that such a task is achievable. With enough funds, deployment of community based teams to provide adequate healthcare facilities, subsidized education, infrastructure to build schools, roads etc and providing programs such as apprenticeships amongst other things will improve the living standards of poor communities. These movements will not just result in material improvements in standards of living but will also induce moral shifts in a way which communities can lead their lives. For example, where living standards have been improved, parents may not want their children to undertake hard labor but would rather encourage their children to gain an education. Thus therefore it is the escape out of the poverty trap that we believe will prevent young girls such as those in Rach Gia being victimized by human sex traffickers. Although this may not occur in our lifetime, we truly believe that such a task will be accomplished one day.