Rebuilding Cambodia, woman by woman

Thyda looks like any other young girl but she has lived through trauma most of us could never imagine.

At the age of 12 she was told that she needed to make money in order to buy medicine for her sick grandfather. Because she was considered beautiful, her mother sold her to a friend for $300, who in turn sold her to a high-ranking Cambodian official for $800.

She stayed with him for three hours on that first night. Then she was moved all over the country, being re-sold over and over again. Her mother told her that her aunt was also sick and needed money for medicine. At the third brothel she managed to escape after being granted permission to go for a walk. She found a phone and called her aunt, who she discovered was not sick at all. The aunt called a human rights organisation, which sent police to rescue Thyda. She was taken to the Cambodian Womens Crisis Center shelter because she had nowhere else to go.

Thyda now wonders if the woman who sold her into prostitution really was her mother because she doesnt believe that a mother could sell her own daughter.
I never knew about my family my father, my mothers name or my sisters name, she recalls. All I ever heard was people telling me that this woman was really my mother. So I dont know. Who is my mother?

Of all of the incredibly strong and resilient girls and women I and my two colleagues have met during the making of a radio documentary about sex-trafficking for Outer Voices, a California-based media group, her story has touched me the most.

Cambodian girls and women often find themselves caring for their parents, and because there are so few jobs they sometimes have to work in the sex industry to provide money for their families.

They sell sex in the red-light districts, karaoke bars and restaurants. Cambodia is a popular destination for tourists looking for prostitutes, but foreigners are not the main customers: about 90 per cent of the men who pay for sex are Cambodians.

Many of the prostitutes come from rural areas and have been tricked or coerced into working in the industry: they are promised good jobs with enough pay to send some money home to their families, a place to live and the experience of city life. Others are tricked into going abroad, such as Malaysia or Thailand. Those lucky enough to escape the brothels in which they are imprisoned find themselves in a foreign country illegally, and if caught are sent to jail, unable to contact their families or return home.

Facts about the sex industry in Cambodia are hard to come by because it is largely underground and transient. Some sources estimate that one woman in 10 between the ages of 15 and 25 has been trafficked; others say there are 50,000-60,000 female sexworkers, of whom at least 35 per cent are estimated to be under 18. Over half the women involved in sexwork are thought to have been trafficked, with the other half voluntarily choosing the industry.

HIV and AIDS is a growing problem. The seroprevalence rate in Cambodia is put at 2.2 per cent, with as many as 40 per cent of sexworkers infected. Many of their clients are married men who subsequently infect their wives. Condom use is low and most prostitutes have no say in whether or not one is used.

Traffickers are often women known and trusted in their communities, and who use that trust to convince the girls and women to leave their homes and families. The girls are sold and are then forced to receive male clients in brothels or the backs of bars. Conditions in these places are often unsanitary and hostile many women we spoke to talked about being emotionally and physically abused by the brothel owners and patrolled by gangsters.

I had to work all day, taking clients. When I wasnt working I was locked up so I wouldnt run away. Sometimes they would hurt us and give electric shocks. Sometimes they would shock a woman so hard she would die. They also gave us drugs before we received clients so that we would be happier when the men came, said Mara, a former sexworker.

This story was typical of the handful of women we met who had escaped their traffickers.

Corruption is widespread, with many officials earning little pay. Some accept bribes to supplement their incomes, accepting money for turning a blind eye. The head of the Ministry of Womens Affairs, Mu Sochua, recently stepped down, citing corruption as a major obstacle in her work.

Cambodia has a large population of non-governmental organisations, but there are criticisms that many spend time in bidding wars for contracts rather than rebuilding the country. The real work on the ground to solve the problem is with organisations like the Cambodian Womens Crisis Center (CWCC).

You have to be brave enough to protect the victim. People might feel threatened, but when we see what has been done to the women, then we feel angry and we dont care much about the security - we have to confront the perpetrators, says Chanthol Oung, the Centers director. The small, soft-spoken Oung created the Centre in 1997 while working with another local human rights organisation. At that time there were no resources for women at risk from violence, and no services for raped or trafficked women. Oung was the first Cambodian woman to create such an organisation, in a country run predominantly by foreign, male-led NGOs.

The group operates in three provinces and has shelters that provide accommodation, food, literacy training, counselling and legal services. The Centre does policy advocacy, working with the government to create appropriate laws and cooperates with local police. Part of their mandate is to help women get out of the sex industry through rehabilitation and reintegration programmes: women are trained in sewing and computers and are then helped find jobs that can support them and their families. Some are given start-up grants for restaurants, shops and other small businesses.

Most of the better-known NGOs in Cambodia are run by expatriates, Chanthol points out. But in order to be effective we need to be aware of the real needs of the targeted groups. Some international organisations come into the country and work without the cooperation of the local groups, and fail. It would be best to work to help supplement each other.
I started CWCC from a small group of people, but as we have grown we have asked for help from other organisations and countries, she says.

Keap Noun, director of a womens shelter run by the Centre, tells us, Now the problem facing poor children is their lack of education. If someone asks them to come and work in the city, they will go because their families need the money. Because the work is outside of the home, and not in the family, what they do is outside the eye of the family. The families dont know what happens to their children and the children must stand by themselves. They must decide for themselves what is right or wrong.

The Center tries to prevent these situations developing, by offering training and scholarships for girls at risk.

Although I have studied international development and womens issues, I have no answers. It is the women who are finding the strength and courage to escape their situations and set up new lives for themselves. They are defying a larger system made up of corruption, economic desperation and few options, meant to imprison them. Cambodia doesnt need more foreign organisations imposing top-down measures or prescriptions: support for peoples own initiatives is the most important contribution we can make.

* Karoline Kemp has been working with Outer Voices for a year. In the autumn she will begin an internship with OneWorld UK Partner Fahamu, an African social justice network, in Oxford and Cape Town.