Cambodia’s Past Sets Up an Economy for Sex Trafficking

In my Comparative Genocide at my university, we took an in depth look at the history of Cambodia. Having this background makes it easier to see how Cambodia is one of the world’s most active countries for human trafficking.

Here’s a quick outline that might help explain the state of the Cambodian economy and why the crime of human trafficking is more prevalent there:

• The US heavily bombed the Cambodian countryside 1969 to 1973 targeting Northern Vietnamese soldiers and the Cambodian government allowed this to happen. This was during the US Vietnam War. The bombing heavily impacted Cambodia’s infrastructure, caused about 150,000 casualties, and displaced thousands from their homes in the countryside.
• The Khmer Rouge, a brutal communist regime, took over the Cambodian government from 1975 and stayed in power until 1979.
• The regime’s goal for Cambodia was to create a utopian peasant society based on agriculture. In order to achieve this, they evacuated all of the cities and distributed the people around the countryside. This halted all business – international and domestic.
• The Khmer Rouge killed about 1.7 million Cambodians, which made up over 1/5^th of the population. They especially targeted intellectuals, merchants, bureaucrats.
• After 1975 and the removal of the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese were largely in power in Cambodia until 1989. Political instability and economic instability marked the country.
• Since 1989, Cambodian markets have been gradually opening to the global economy and the country has been developing, but it is still a poor nation with a GDP ranked at 121 in the world. This number does not reflect the division between the rich and poor within Cambodia.

Human trafficking can be found in even the most wealthy and industrialized nations such as the US, but by far, the majority of it can be found in the poorer nations. Would people choose to go into the crime of prostitution or to run a brothel if good paying honest jobs were available to them? I think that most would choose otherwise.

~ by shainalent on February 29, 2008.