Climate Change, Forced Migration and Trafficking in Persons: Risk of Young Women in Rural Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Cambodia, a low-income country in the Mekong Delta region, potentially faces devastating impacts of climate change and associated natural and manmade disasters. Although anti-trafficking efforts in Cambodia have improved substantially, Cambodia remains a country of source, transit, and destination of trafficking in persons (TIP). Utilizing our preliminary research on young women in rural Cambodia as a case study, we discuss available, though fragmented, suggestive evidence to link climate change/disaster crisis and forced migration to TIP increases. Based on our and others’ conceptual models, we further suggest that evidence-based anti-TIP mitigation measures in climate-impacted areas need to be culturally and migration-stage-specific to be successful.

KEYWORDS:

• Trafficking in persons
• Cambodia
• climate change
• natural disaster
• migration

Acknowledgments

Kneath Heard (Chab Dai Coalition), Thak Socheat (Cambodia Women’s Crisis Center), and Robin Mauney contributed to the intervention development plan. Sheldon Zhang assisted in conceptualization of our intervention development model. Whitney Howland assisted in reviewing risk and protective factors for TIP vulnerability applicable to young women in Cambodia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Contributorship

PP developed an earlier conceptual model. PP wrote a portion of an earlier draft; RKP and PP co-wrote the current version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

Preparation of this essay was made possible in part through support provided by a Fulbright Scholar Program fellowship to the first author. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.