US Threatens Sanctions Over Trafficking Issue

Cambodia has only a few months to improve its record on human trafficking before it could face stiff sanctions from the US, a US State Department official said on Friday.

Addressing a seminar in Phnom Penh on Washington’s human trafficking country re­port, official Phillip Lind­erman said Cambodia must improve it efforts to combat human trafficking before finalization of the 2003 assessment, which will be re­leased in June.

“Here there is a problem… what the government’s doing, so far, what we’ve seen is inadequate,” he said.

In 2002, Cambodia sunk to the lowest “Tier 3” group of countries in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report.

The Tier 3 category is assigned to countries that are not complying with minimum standards laid down by the US on government efforts to stamp out trafficking, or making significant efforts to improve that situation.

“In the year 2003, under the American law, those governments placed in Tier 3…will face US government sanctions. Those sanctions consist essentially of denial of US government assistance in the non-humanitarian and non-trade related context,” he said.

The sanctions could also in­clude the US voting against international financial institutions such as the World Bank or Inter­na­tional Monetary Fund providing loans to Cambodia and the US garment quota allocations to Cambodia, Linderman said.

Linderman—who is in Cambo­dia to gather new information and talk to officials on the trafficking situation—said the State Depart­ment was in the process of making its country evaluations.

Interior Ministry Secretary of State Prum Sokha said after the seminar that regardless of Wash­ington’s poor assessments, Cam­bodia is working hard to crackdown on human trafficking and has launched several initiatives that have had some success.

Trafficking rings have been exposed and sex tourists who feed on children trafficked into Cambodia’s sex trade have been arrested, Prum Sokha said.

The real issue is tackling the root cause of human trafficking, which is based in poverty, lack of education and weaknesses in the judicial system, Prum Sokha added. “The government doesn’t sit idly by or remain inactive to face this problem,” he said.

 

 

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