Cherry Huong

Many of the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 prostitutes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia are believed to be Vietnamese girls and women. (UNICEF, Children on the Edge, citing UN ESCAP 2000)

3,000 Vietnamese girls are smuggled to Cambodia for prostitution, 15% are under 15 years. ("Trafficking of Children on the Rise", Bangkok Post 22 July 1998)

Prostituted girls, most of them ages 15-18 years, are found in the Svay Pak red-light district of Cambodia.

Many girls are much younger. Most of them are smuggled in from Vietnam and all are bound by contracts, which last from six months to over a year. Svay Pak has the largest number of prostituted Vietnamese girls. (CATW Fact Book, citing "The Street of Little Flowers", Bangkok Post 23 February 1997, rewritten from Mikel Flammn and Ngo Kim Cuc "Children of the Dust")

Most trafficking is to China and to Cambodia, including children. Trafficking happens through kidnapping, especially for brothels, deceptive job offers or tourist trips, match-making with foreigners who often sell and resell the women and girls abroad. (CATW, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

Children also are trafficked domestically and overseas to work as prostitutes. One NGO advocate estimated that, among trafficked girls, the average age was from 15-17 years, many were trafficked to Cambodia and China. (US Dept of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 1999, 25 February 2000)

The statistics do not begin to tell the stories of the children we are trying to help. Today we know of hundreds of young children that are hiding in Cambodia for a chance to come home to Vietnam. We know that there are young girls that are enslaved in sex houses because their parents "sold" them to a trafficker that promised to find them "good jobs". We know that there is such misery that girls will often leave their homes to prostitute so that she can earn less than $1 a day to feed her family. There is an entire generation of children in Vietnam that will grow up without any chance - without any hope - without any safe choices - without an education.