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Cambodia
Children for sale in Cambodia
©
Mikkel Østergaard
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| Street children in Phnom Penh, Cambodia |
25 years of civil war in Cambodia and the hardest hit are the children.
Difficult living conditions in the provinces due to poverty, low crop yields, floods, landmines, debts, family tensions and domestic violence, etc., means that the rural poor, who make up 85-90% of the population, cannot afford to feed their children, let alone send them to school. And thus, many of them end up on the streets.
A further harsh reality is that many of them are forced to migrate and become the victims of rape, physical or sexual abuse, exploitative working conditions and trafficking.
- “My name is Soula, I am 13 years old. I come from Kampong Cham province. I have no parents. I never knew my parents and lived with my grandmother. One day when I was 6 years old, a housekeeper took me to the market with her and sold me to a family. I was then sold several times by different families in Kampong Cham and in Kratie to work as a babysitter and cleaner in their houses. I was always being blamed and hit and eventually I was so sad and unhappy that I decided to run away. I arrived in Kampong Cham again to try and find my grandmother. I looked and looked but couldn’t remember where she lived because I was little when I was taken away. Everyone told me to go to Phnom Penh and so I went. When I arrived, it was very difficult for me because I did not know anything or anyone in Phnom Penh.”
The DCA partner Friends-International/Mith Samlanh (FI/MS) has spent the last 11 years fighting for the rights and needs of street children, like Soula. Ultimately, the staff who spend their days on the streets and within the communities, work to support the children's social reintegration (reintegration into their families or alternative care, public school system, workplace, and culture) in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child .
The Safe Migration Project, in Phnom Penh (a traditional arrival point) and Kampong Cham (a traditional departure point) works to prevent internal and external unsafe migration and trafficking.
Fortunately, Soula’s story ends happily, being reunited with her grandmother in Kandal province, after having met the Friends-International/Mith Samlanh (FI/MS) safe migration team at Phnom Penh’s central taxi rank. But Sophal’s future is a lot less sure.
- Sophal is 15 years old. The last time her parents saw her was early on a Wednesday morning in March as they headed out to the fields. Sophal no longer went to school because her parents were too poor and needed her to work in the home. On their return home, Sophal was not there. Presuming she had gone to the market they didn’t worry. But when it started getting dark, they became concerned. Frantic, they searched everywhere, asking anyone if they had seen her. The last time she was seen by someone in Kampong Cham was getting into a taxi with two middle aged woman, headed for Phnom Penh, and who knows where afterwards.
The fate of Sophal is unknown, her whereabouts and her future, are anybody’s guess. To avoid cases like this, the work undertaken by the safe migration team and the network of police, motodops, taxi drivers and sellers that the team trains to become their extra eyes and ears, cannot be underestimated.
By Tracy Sprott, Friends International
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