Investigates horror of child sex industry in Cambodia.
Thirty years of war has left Cambodia ravaged and poverty-stricken. Since the end of the brutal Khmer Rouge rule, poverty, corruption and global tourism have combined to make it particularly vulnerable to the child labor industry. Children as young as ten years old are trafficked into cities from rural areas to become sex workers or trafficked out to comparatively wealthy Thailand to work as beggars, domestic laborers, or laborers on construction sites. Most of the sex workers are girls, although some of the boys on the streets are working as prostitutes too.
With seventy percent of the Cambodian population living in rural areas, international trafficking gangs target poor rural families, often striking when times are hardest. They offer 'loans' in return for the children which then accumulate huge interest repayments, leaving the children trapped in 'debt bondage' for life.
This program from the City Life series investigates the trade and new efforts by the International Labor Organization and local groups to rescue the children and stop the traffic.
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