Cambodia is
oft seen as an hub for trafficking, especially when it comes to trafficking in
prostitution. This perception is not just present for Cambodia, but for South
Asia in general. In fact, in the 1980s, it began circulating in Bangkok,
Thailand(a country that trafficked people being smuggled through Cambodia can
easily end up) that of 2 million Thai sex workers that existed, 800,000 were under 18. This would indicate about 4% of Thailand’s total population at the
time was in the sex trade, with 40% of those in the work definitely being
trafficked.
In Cambodia, though the recent
information(or misinformation) circulating is not nearly so outrageous as this
false information regarding Thailand, it has recently been said that “there are 80,000-100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia, with 58% being trafficked. The low end estimate for number of ‘sex slaves’ in Cambodia is 40,000”. However, when data
put out by Steinfatt and Baker is examined, it is shown that “the number of sex trafficking victims in Cambodia is at most, 1,058, including 127 children, six of whom are under 13.” This data is out of a population of 27,925 sex workers
in 2008.
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| Cambodia Herald |
There are problems inherent in all research that targets the
informal economy, that is, the off-the-books industries. Additionally, in
speaking on trafficking, trafficking for sexual exploitation, though it is much
smaller than those trafficked for labour, sex trafficking eclipses other forms
of trafficking in terms of the attention it gets. Because of this, one may have
to dig deeper when looking for finite figures of non-sex trafficking. For
example: it is known that issues like forced begging and construction are a
problem in this country, but when compared to sex trafficking issues here it is
very difficult to find information regarding finite numerical data, even if
flawed, due to the amount of attention given to sex trafficking here.
Trafficking is inherently bad, and while attention to a problem is good, to
give skew information for the sake of awareness can lead to big problems, as recent events have shown.
Reading this post, I can't help but think about the factoids we are all trying to crack. We are all affected by trafficking, but the distorted statistics are everywhere. I appreciate the shedding of truth on this topic, we need to know the truth and the correct numbers to be able to truly understand the situation.
ReplyDeleteCambodia is definitely a very talked about country when it comes to human trafficking. Great topic to investigate! I'm very interested to her your presentation on this.
ReplyDeleteI this this topic is interesting in relation to the facts we are investigating in class. I hope to see how you explain that these facts are actually false in your presentation.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the most difficult challenge for one who is wanting to learn more about trafficking so that they can start contributing to efforts against it; what is the truth? There is so much information out there, you can become frozen not knowing where to look and what to believe.
ReplyDeleteHow can this be overcome? How can one know that the information they are consuming is the truth?