Human trafficking in Cambodia

Part of a series on
Forced labour and slavery
Contemporary Child Labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Involuntary servitude Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Black Sea slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Prague slave trade Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Genoese slave trade Venetian slave trade Balkan slave trade Muslim world Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Slavery in al-Andalus ‎ Baqt Contract of manumission Bukhara slave trade Crimean slave trade Khazar slave trade Khivan slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Safavid imperial harem Qajar harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm al-walad Circassian slave trade Saqaliba Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Volga Bulgarian slave trade 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labour Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Zanzibar slave trade Angola Chad Comoros Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia Somali slave trade South Africa Sudan Zanzibar North and South America Pre-Columbian America Aztec Americas indigenous U.S. Natives United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labour Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan Brunei China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Indonesia Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Malaysia Maldives Slavery in the Mongol Empire Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe United Kingdom Penal Labour Slavery Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90 Temporary Slavery Commission 1926 Slavery Convention Committee of Experts on Slavery Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman Manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Forced labour Fugitive slaves laws convention Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery List of slavery-related memorials and museums Slave marriages in the United States Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

In 2006, Cambodia was a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking. The traffickers were reportedly organized crime syndicates, parents, relatives, friends, intimate partners, and neighbors.^[1]

Cambodia ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in July 2007.^[2]

Despite human trafficking being a crime in Cambodia,^[3] the country has a significant child sex tourism problem;^[3][4][5][6] some children are sold by their parents, while others are lured by what they think are legitimate job offers like waitressing, but then are forced into prostitution. Children are often held captive, beaten, and starved to force them into prostitution. Fraud factories have also proliferated in Cambodia during the 2020s.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report downgraded Cambodia to "Tier 3" due to the Cambodian government's failure to meet the minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking and insufficient effort to address human trafficking.^[7] Cambodia had previously hovered between Tier 2 and the Tier 2 watch lists.^[1][8] The country remained at Tier 3 in 2023.^[9]

In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave the country a score of 8.5 out of 10 for human trafficking, noting a sharp increase in numbers after Covid.^[10]

A UNICEF survey concluded that 35% of Cambodia's 15,000 prostitutes are children under the age of 16. Almost all of Cambodian brothels are Vietnamese-owned, with most of its prostitutes being of Vietnamese descent and captured sex slaves being of other ethnic groups. Men are trafficked for forced labor in the agriculture, fishing, and construction industries. Women are trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor in factories or as domestic servants. Children are trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor in organized begging rings, soliciting, and street vending.^[1]

Common destinations for trafficking victims are Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville.^[11]

Pimps are reported to imprison young children who are virgins. These children would not be placed to work until they had been presented to a series of bidders, such as high-ranking military officers, politicians, businessmen, and foreign tourists. Young girls working in brothels are in effect, sex slaves; they receive no money, only food, and armed guards stop them from running away.^[12] Children are often held captive, beaten, and starved to force them into prostitution.^[3]

In 1995, a 15-year-old child that was trafficked into prostitution in a brothel in the Svay Por district of Battambang was beaten to death.^[13]

Children as young as 3 are being sold as slaves for sex.^[3] By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of children are bought, sold, or kidnapped around the world each year and then forced to have sex.^[3] ECPAT Cambodia reports that as many as one third of the trafficking victims in prostitution are children.^[14]

The MOI reported the arrest of 31 foreign child molesters in Cambodia in 2009.^[15]

There are significant reports on human trafficking on forced to fraud in Cambodia. Victims are forced to fraud the Internet users worldwide. If they don't want to fraud, they are risk to organ harvesting. ^[16][17]

A law was passed in January 1997 to curb trafficking in women, with fines of up to $12,000 and prison sentences of up to 20 years for pimps and brothel owners.

In 2008, the Government introduced the Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, which criminalizes all forms of trafficking. However, the country remained a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and labor. Children were trafficked domestically for sexual exploitation.^[15]

Cambodia is party to several international covenants prohibiting the trafficking of persons and the exploitation of women and children.^[11]

Cambodia has continued to assist U.S. law enforcement authorities in the transfer to U.S. custody of Americans who have sexually exploited children in Cambodia.^[1]

December 12 is observed as National Anti-Human Trafficking Day in Cambodia.^[11]

On the ground in Cambodia, a number of non-governmental organizations and non-profit organizations are working to combat human trafficking. These include AFESIP, the Somaly Mam Foundation, Hagar International, ECPAT,^[18] and Agape International Missions.^[19] There are also other development partners that work together to fight against human trafficking.^[20][21][22]

Overseas job scams are rampant in Cambodia. People are lured in by offers of a high-paying job with little to no experience or work visa needed, then held hostage under threats of violence and forced to work as "cyber slaves" in call centers making scam phone calls and other cryptocurrency and online gambling schemes. Citizens from Vietnam and Chinese-speaking countries are most frequently targeted.^[23][24] People are tortured and may be sold if they refused to scam others.^[25]

On 17 August 2022, 42 Vietnamese victims escaped from the Golden Phoenix casino near the Chrey Thom border checkpoint by swimming across the Binh Di River. Among them, a 16-year-old boy drowned crossing the river. On 17 September 2022, a group of 60 Vietnamese people fled from a casino in Bavet city in Svay Rieng province. Cambodian police later managed to rescue 15 more Vietnamese nationals.^[26]

• Cambodia's child sex crackdown
• Cambodia says no to sex tourists
• Cambodia tours, hotels must adopt zero tolerance to sex tourism, advocates say
• UNIAP Trafficking Estimates Measuring the Extent of Sex Trafficking in Cambodia–2008