The recent jailing and arrests of child sex offenders in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap province may deter foreign sex tourists from targeting Cambodia, a regional conference on preventing child abuse in tourism was told on Friday.
The Asia Regional Think Tank on the Prevention of Child Abuse in Tourism Destinations also said embassies of the countries from which sex tourist come must cooperate to stamp out abuse by their citizens in Cambodia and the region.
The arrests may have indicated to potential sex offenders that Cambodia is not as easy a place for indescretions as it once was.
“We know that offenders will only go to places they think they will not get caught,” Christine Beddoe, program manager of Child Wise Tourism, told the conference.
Beddoe said that her organization recently received information that a sex offender in Vietnam reported that he had now stopped traveling to Thailand and Cambodia because it had become “too difficult” to procure underage sexual partners.
However, if child sex tourists stop traveling to Cambodia, they may begin to target other destinations such as Laos, Vietnam and the Indonesian island of Bali, she said.
“To have maximum impact in Southeast Asia we need collaboration,” Beddoe told the audience of child rights workers, diplomats and staff from the state tourist authorities of Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
“The role of embassies becomes vital in exchanging information that may lead to more timely and efficient investigation. We call on all embassies to develop child protection policies,” she said.
