How bad is sex trafficking in Cambodia?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

How bad is sex trafficking in Cambodia? (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/06/how-bad-sex-trafficking-cambodia-201468124236117557.html)


In early 2011, Srey Mao, 28, and two friends were "rescued" and taken to a shelter run by Afesip, a Cambodian organisation that prides itself on helping sex-trafficking victims recover from trauma while learning new trades such as sewing and hairdressing.

There was just one problem: The women claim they hadn't actually been trafficked.

Instead, the women said they were willing sex workers who had been rounded up off the street during a police raid and sent to Afesip, headed by the internationally renowned anti-sex-slavery crusader Somaly Mam with funding from the foundation that bears her name.

They said they were confined there for months as purported victims of sex trafficking. Srey Mao claimed that she, her friends and a number of other sex workers in the centre were instructed by a woman to tell foreign visitors they had been trafficked.

[#FF0000]

Srey Mao said she became a prostitute because she believed it was the best option to support her aging parents and young daughter. Months in the Afesip shelter did not change her mind. She claims that after she arrived at the shelter, she was not given access to anti-retroviral drugs for five days or allowed to see her family. Instead, she was enrolled in a yearlong sewing course, entailing eight hours a day of study or garment work.

This is probably the most interesting paragraph in the entire article. How many women would be doing sex work if the alternative wasn't a much, much, much lower standard of living/quality of life?

[mindsword]

maybe they are still threatened? or maybe they are voluntary...... in any case they need to be taught something else..... shit is very bad for your health, your family and just everything in general..

give em ninjutsu classes

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

How many women would be doing sex work if the alternative wasn't a much, much, much lower standard of living/quality of life?
True, and yet anti-sex work crusaders want to teach such women to sew. Sex work or sweat shop work.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

give em ninjutsu classes
What?

[Luís Henrique]

learning new trades such as sewing and hairdressing

:glare:

With "rescuers" like that...

Luís Henrique

[CubanDream]

Is there an answer to this issue then - what can poor girls in developing countries do instead, when there are literally no jobs out there, or those that do only pay 50$/month?

[Revolver]

This analysis could be adopted in the United States as well, where there is a proliferation of groups opposed to "sex trafficking," which in some cases has been re-conceptualized to encompass every form of child sexual abuse, prostitution and the like. I suspect that there is a mixture of motive behind this phenomenon. On the one hand, it is easier to obtain funding to fight criminal conspiracies than it is to provide ordinary relief to undocumented workers or other vulnerable groups. On the other hand, as was the case with the anti-pornography movement, you have a unique coalition of feminists and social conservatives who can join forces to pass laws, raise money, etcetera. The end result, of course, is the growth of the carceral state and new forms of social control.