Cambodia - IOM is warning of a rise in trafficking of Cambodian men into the Thai fishing industry. Its Phnom Penh office has already helped as many male trafficking victims in the first two months of 2013 as it did in the whole of 2012.

IOM Cambodia, key Government ministries and local organisations have assisted 26 men since the beginning of the year. IOM helped them to return home and processed them on arrival. Nearly half the men – whose average age was 31 – were from Kampong Cham province. Others came from Kampong Thom, Prey Veng, Takeo and Banteay Meanchey.

Some of the men said they had gone to sea voluntarily, but others said they had been tricked into working aboard Thai fishing boats and then forced to work in slave-like conditions without pay. Most reported that they originally travelled to Thailand through local brokers and without legal documentation to find work.

They told of little food and no medicine when men fell ill aboard the Thai vessels. Most escaped their captors when the vessels docked or were intercepted by the Indonesia authorities in Eastern Indonesian waters.

When they arrived back in Cambodia, IOM provided food, temporary accommodation, medical check-ups and counselling, and referred the returnees to local NGO partners and the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation for legal and psycho-social support. It also provided a daily subsistence allowance and travel grants to help the men return to their home provinces.

All 26 men have now safely returned to their homes, where IOM has provided small-grant assistance and plans to provide further long-term assistance in close partnership with local organisations.

"We are pleased to be involved in the return and reintegration of these victims, but the upward trend is very worrying," says Brett Dickson, Coordinator of IOM's Migrant Health Project in Cambodia. "Many of these men have spent months or even years at sea, passed from boat to boat without ever touching dry land in some cases. They were working as slaves or for a pittance in some of the remotest waters in the world, in dangerous and desperate conditions."
 
IOM is now actively supporting Cambodia's Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation in assisting and reintegrating male victims of trafficking. Until recently, official Cambodian assistance to victims of trafficking only targeted women and children.

IOM Cambodia has returned and assisted 1,030 Cambodian victims of trafficking since 2007. In 2011 and 2012 alone, IOM Cambodia and IOM Indonesia assisted in the safe return and reintegration of more than 100 Cambodian male victims of trafficking, most of them trafficked into the Thai fishing industry.

For more information please contact  

Brett Dickson
IOM Cambodia
Email: bdickson@iom.int