Cambodia is expanding as a destination for sex tourists and human trafficking and has become a major source of heroin sent to Australia, according to a new report released in Sydney on Tuesday by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The report, Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific: A Threat Assessment, looked at 12 “illicit flows” that fall under the categories of human trafficking and migrant smuggling, illicit drugs, resources and pollution crime, and products such as fake medicines.
It compiled data collected since the 1990s on the regional movement of items such as counterfeit goods, illegal wood products, heroin, illegal wildlife, migrant smuggling and e-waste.
“Sex tourism from the West is the best documented, but Asian sex tourists appear to be more numerous. The illicit market in Thailand is probably the best known internationally, but markets in other countries, such as Cambodia, are expanding,” the U.N. said.
“Field observation in over 2,000 venues in all 24 provinces of Cambodia in 2008 concluded that 3.8 of the women at these venues met the rather strict criteria for trafficking, namely that they were either under the age of 18 or that they were not free to leave the venue.”
The report determines that between Cambodia and Thailand, the income generated by an approximate 4,025 trafficking victims reached about “$45,000 per victim per year, or about $181 million in gross revenues for their traffickers.”
It also found that while the majority of those who pay for sex in Cambodia are Cambodians, over time, Cambodia appears to have also developed a sex tourism industry.
On the topic of migrant workers, the report says that research shows “just under a quarter of those questioned experienced some degree of exploitation, regardless of the field-agriculture, construction, factory work, and services,” while one-third of migrants reported abuse and exploitation in the fishing industry.
“Research among Cambodian deportees from Thailand shows that Cambodian men are almost twice as likely to be cheated or trafficked as Cambodian women,” it says.
The report also says that Cambodia’s role in the trafficking of heroin has grown, and noted that most of the drugs brought through Cambodia enroute to their final destination come from Burma.
“Cambodia has become a transshipment hub of growing importance, and a major source of heroin shipped to Australia.”
With regard to illegal logging, the UNODC noted that “individual Cambodian politicians and military officers reportedly continue to be involved illegal logging activities.”
