An interagency committee and its secretariat coordinated anti-trafficking activities and continued to implement the national action plan; however, authorities did not report steps to prepare for activities subsequent to its conclusion in The government allocated 4. Subsidiary provincial anti-trafficking committees, which reportedly continued to receive modest central government funds and assistance from NGOs, coordinated efforts at the local level to mirror the activities of the national action plan.
With the help of international donors, six out of nine of these committees created their own provincial-level action plans and submitted them to the government five in The secretariat of the NCCT maintained a working group to monitor the efforts of the interagency committee as well as those of its provincial subsidiary committees. However, NGOs noted the provincial committees' ad hoc reliance on insufficient surplus funds from General Social Services — rather than on their own annual budgets — undermined the scope and sustainability of their work.
Lack of coordinating guidance from the national counterpart committee further impeded their effectiveness. The Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training MLVT maintained a separate action plan aimed at reducing child labor and debt bondage in the service, agricultural, mining, and energy sectors by through awareness raising, increased legal action, and collaboration with civil society, funded in part through the national budget.
MLVT also continued to implement its "National Employment Policy ," which sought to generate secure employment opportunities in hopes of discouraging the use of illicit migration channels known for trafficking vulnerabilities. The government continued to investigate and prosecute labor recruiters for illegal practices that may have contributed to or involved trafficking; in August, authorities shut down an unlicensed recruitment firm and arrested three men suspected of facilitating illicit labor migration to Japan.
The government did not report whether the arrests culminated in further investigations, prosecutions, or convictions; officials and NGO observers noted labor officials' failure to sufficiently inspect private recruitment agencies, and the ability of these agencies to sub-license their names to independent brokers, continued to perpetuate widespread labor exploitation.
The Ministry of Education trained of its officials and teachers across six provinces on trafficking awareness and safe migration during the reporting period. The General Department of Immigration also issued , border passes to Cambodian migrant workers, in lieu of passports, to incentivize safe labor migration to Thailand; as part of the same initiative, the government sent officials to Thailand on a day campaign to issue necessary documentation to migrant workers.
The MFAIC continued to implement consular screening measures to reduce the sex and labor trafficking of Cambodian women via forced and fraudulent marriages, including by assessing applicants against trafficking victim profiles jointly developed with China in However, the MFA did not report referring these potential victims to law enforcement or protective services. The government maintained two labor recruitment agreements with Saudi Arabia and signed a new domestic worker recruitment agreement with Hong Kong.
The Ministry of Tourism held workshops for hotel staff and government officials on preventing child sexual exploitation in the hospitality industry. As in prior years, the government generally focused on deterring foreign involvement in child sex tourism, rather than targeting campaigns to the local population that constituted the main source of demand for commercial sex with children in Cambodia. Authorities reported arresting five foreign individuals suspected of engaging in child sex tourism 12 in but did not report whether they initiated prosecutions in any of these cases.
Local experts reported concern over the government's ongoing failure to impose appropriate punishments on foreign nationals who purchase commercial sex acts with children. The government provided anti-trafficking training for its diplomatic personnel and to members of the military prior to their deployment abroad on peacekeeping initiatives.
As reported over the last five years, Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Cambodian adults and children migrate to other countries within the region and increasingly to the Middle East for work; many are subjected to forced labor on fishing vessels, in agriculture, in construction, in factories, and in domestic servitude — often through debt bondage — or to sex trafficking.
Migrants using irregular migration channels, predominantly with the assistance of unlicensed brokers, are at an increased risk of trafficking, but those using licensed recruiting agents also become victims of forced labor or sex trafficking.
Children from impoverished families are vulnerable to forced labor, often with the complicity of their families, including in domestic servitude and forced begging or street vending in Thailand and Vietnam.
Significant numbers of Cambodian men and boys continue to be recruited in Thailand to work on fishing boats and are subjected to forced labor on Thai-owned and operated vessels in international waters. Cambodian men report severe abuses by Thai captains, deceptive recruitment, underpaid wages, and being forced to remain aboard vessels for years.
All of Cambodia's 25 provinces are sources for human trafficking. Sex trafficking is largely clandestine; Cambodian and ethnic Vietnamese women and girls move from rural areas to cities and tourist destinations, where they are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels and, more frequently, such "indirect" sex establishments as beer gardens, massage parlors, salons, karaoke bars, retail spaces, and non-commercial sites.
Cambodian men form the largest source of demand for children exploited in prostitution; however, men from elsewhere in Asia and Europe, the United States, Australia, and South Africa travel to Cambodia to engage in child sex tourism. The proprietors of brick kilns often subject Cambodian men, women, and children — often entire families — to debt bondage, either by buying off their preexisting loans or by requiring them to take out new loans as a condition of employment.
An extensive, largely unregulated network of predatory microfinance organizations and private creditors contributes to this arrangement by proactively advertising loans to families in vulnerable communities and connecting them with the kilns. An NGO study conducted in found nearly percent of brick kilns surveyed throughout the country featured indicators of debt bondage. Children as young as 13 are also subjected to forced domestic servitude and labor on riparian and oceanic fishing boats, karaoke bars, and cassava plantations to pay off family debts accrued through this system.
Vietnamese women and children, many of whom are victims of debt bondage, travel to Cambodia and are subjected to sex trafficking. NGOs report criminal gangs transport some Vietnamese victims through Cambodia before they are exploited in Thailand and Malaysia. Traffickers in Cambodia are most commonly family or community members or small networks of independent brokers. Phnom Penh anti-trafficking police chief Keo Thea hung up when asked about the arrests and did not respond to further calls.
The arrests throw the fate of the babies into limbo and it remains unclear if the unknown foreign intended parents will be permitted to claim and raise the children. Chou Bun Eng said commercial surrogacy was seen as buying or selling children and therefore as human trafficking. But surrogacy advocates and couples desperate for a child have objected to that characterisation. He added that the arrests of vulnerable surrogates missed the mark, as the problem lay with surrogacy agents who recruited women in contravention of Cambodian guidelines.
While women's advocates say women who enter into surrogacy agreements are often impoverished and unaware it is illegal, Chou Bun Eng said there was no excuse. She added that those who broke the rules would face legal consequences, despite Cambodia's law on surrogacy still being drafted. Chak Sopheap, from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, said women who acted as surrogate mothers generally came from poor backgrounds and were deprived of education or other opportunities.
She said organisers of surrogacy rings should be punished but were entitled to independent investigations and transparent, fair trials. Commercial surrogacy flourished in Cambodia after bans on the practice in Nepal, India and Thailand following the international outcry over the Baby Gammy case. But surrogacy was declared illegal in Cambodia in a snap edict from the Health Minister in October According to the suspect, Sin Saosun, he was looking for six Thai nationals to work for his online company.
When the two victims arrived, he thought they were two of the six candidates recruited by the third-party agent for him, and sent them for training at the Xian Ho Borey, but then discovered that they were not Thai.
The suspect was upset that he was tricked by the agent to pay for the wrong candidates, so he held the victims as captives to force the agent to pay back the 1,USD per person and transportation expenses of USD each person, in a total of 2,USD.
After the police interrogation, the two victims claimed that they were interviewed by a third-party agent and got recruited among six candidates in Phnom Penh on October 9. They were asked to stay in the building where they were held as captives. The next morning, they were handcuffed by Sin Saosun who decided to hold them as hostages, because he was scammed by the third-party agent who recruited them. He said that the victims would be locked up for six months if the agent could not pay back the money that he paid for the workers.
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