ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children: Testimony of Rita Campos, 1st voluntary                                          The ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children has opened in Kenya.                                                          ADDHU in Kenya. Priority to the orphans.                                                                                                           Zimbabwe situation and African woman.                                                                                                       Angola: Thousands Forcibly Evicted in Postwar Boom                                                                                           Violation of the Children Rights                                                                                                                          The Changing Face of Mae Sot, Thailand’s “Little Burma”                                                                                        Children of the World                                                                                                                            Prostitution/sexual tourism, the slavery of the 21st century. Cambodia, where sex traffickers are king.
Child soldiers.

ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children: Testimony of Rita Campos, 1st voluntary

My experience as a volunteer

At the ADDHU/CYCA Center for Orphaned Children, the children were waiting for us, all lined up, singing with sweat and beautiful voices.

I have lived with them for some weeks. I was also an orphan there, beautifully welcomed at that Center in Kenya, in a rural area, near Nairobi and near the Kware slums, a mirror of a true and real Africa.

It was amazing the happiness showed by those children. I have never heard them cry. The laughs were constant starting early in the morning until bed time. We have played together, learned together and we have shared feelings of care and friendship. Those children touched my heart deeply. It was very important for me to fell their happiness because they had food, shelter and both physical and emotional comfort.

At the Center everybody are friends and co lived happily.

For all these reasons more international aid is needed in order to allow the Center to give better and better conditions to those beautiful children.

I personally have to thank those children for the true and real lesson of life that they gave me: they had made me a better person. Thank you.

Rita Campos

Be a volunteer at ADDHU/CYCA Center. Send an email to info@addhu.org and ask for our program.

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The ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children in Kenya

Continuing its Project of Humanitarian Aid in Kenya, ADDHU has opened, on the 15th of January, 2008, in collaboration with the local ngo, Capital Youth Caucus Association (CYCA), the ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children. We are thankful to all those who have made donations and given support to this important project.

Although we were able to accept only 15 children, because a lack of funds prevented us from enrolling the 40 children selected at this time, the opening of the centre represents an important first step for the defence of human rights for orphans, an idea strongly defended by ADDHU. We anticipate that others will join us in the development of this Project, so that ADDHU can accept the remaining children who have been selected, and to buy the necessary materials and products to complete the house.

The ADDHU/CYCA Centre for Orphaned Children is located in Ongata Rongai, near the Kware slum, in the area of Nairobi. The children are from that slum and several of them are HIV positive, their parents having died of AIDS. The Centre aims to be, in the future, an Excellency Centre for Children, where they can live and get medical and psychological treatment appropriate to each situation, until they reach the age of 18. To complete the children’s education, the Centre will also develop a programme of Formation in Informatics, an IT Centre.

ADDHU will send Portuguese volunteers of the field of general teaching and informatics, as well as professionals of health and leisure.

Our local coordinator is the Executive Director of CYCA, Armstrong O’Brian Ongera Jnr.

We call upon the help of everyone who can support us on this project, caring and contributing with donations so that we can go forward with our work of Humanitarian Aid in Kenya. One way of helping is to join our Programme Gifts of Hope (go to Activities – Actions & Activities).

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ADDHU in Kenya. Priority to the orphans and the water projects in remote and isolated rural areas. ADDHU will send volunteers to work in health care and education.

Laura Vasconcellos, ADDHU’s president and founder went recently to Kenya, to sign a partnership with a local organization. This partnership with CYCA intends to give humanitarian assistance to the populations.

The ADDHU’s President has distributed about 2000 packs of sanitary-pads, collected in a campaign near the Pingo Doce Supermarkets and donated by the Portuguese company Renova. This product, which was received enthusiastically by the feminine population, will be regularly sent to Kenya by ADDHU.

ADDHU has taken under it support two orphans from the Kitui Ndogo Slum, Adam and Robert, children in need of special health care as they are HIV+.

If you are interested in assisting the orphan children from Kenya, we have a foster parents programme, so you just have to send an email asking for more information and we’ll contact you.

In order to establish the priorities of the humanitarian action, Laura Vasconcellos has visited several regions of the country, starting from the Nairobi’s slums of Kitui Ndogo, Kamukunji, Kware, Ongata Rongai-Kajiado and also the well-known Kibera slum.

Near the Nakuro city, a visit took place, to a poor community in Nanyani, where Laura Vasconcellos heard some members of the community which reported their urgent needs, mostly related to the support of orphan children whose parents were AIDS victims, but also regarding the assistance to young people, so that they can have education and to prevent drug problems, prostitution and crime, easy options for unemployed young people in Kenya.

In the Kisii area, strongly affected by AIDS, villages in isolated and remote places were visited. In those areas, people suffer from several needs, like water, basic health centres, schools/orphanages, and other. In this place, micro-credit financial assistance would be useful to help people to develop the agriculture, to maintain cattle for domestic subsistence and to build small grinding cereals stations to produce flour.

In Kitutu Masaba, Nyamira, Laura Vasconcellos visited the Tombe Dispensary, a fable health care centre, without any hygiene condition or medicines supplies, placed in a remote and isolated area, where a single nurse gives assistance to an average of 200 patients per day.

Both in the educational and health care fields, urges the sending of volunteers: doctors, nurses and psychologists, as the area reveals a great number of teenage mothers and the feminine genital mutilation is still a common practice; specialised teachers, English teachers and even Portuguese, language that would contribute to better relations with other African countries like Angola and Mozambique, teachers of carpentry, electricity systems, plumbers and informatics, so that the young population could have a profession.

Schools and orphanages were visited in the Kitutu Chache and in the Kisumu area were known the problems of the fishermen in the Victoria Lake, one of the poorest communities visited during the mission.

Laura Vasconcellos went also to Nanyuki, where similar problems subsist and there are also a few masai communities. Soon you’ll be able to see the photographs of this mission to Kenya on the website, as well as a short documentary film.

Following you can read an article written for ADDHU/CYCA International.

Hello friends,

Kenya is a land of contrasts. From varying beautiful sceneries in
sandy beaches, snow capped mountain, wildlife, one of the world
largest fresh water lake, many cultures, many languages, highlands,
varying climatic conditions and many more but also a contrast in
fortunes. Kenya is one country with one of the widest income
disparities ranges) in the world, reputed to be second in this infamy
to only Brazil.

Nairobi the capital city of Kenya is a marvel more less the same like
the other great cities of the world like New York, Washington, London,
Kuala Lumpur, Los Angeles, Lisbon, San Francisco, Paris, Johannesburg,
Kampala, Stockholm Tokyo etc. Nairobi has also a rich history stemming
from the 19th century. It is also beautiful and with modern facilities
like international airport, modern businesses like international
banks, insurance, manufacturing firms, infrastructure and so on but
also another city of contrasts. It is the haven of super rich and very
huge and very punitive slums. For instance the biggest slum in Africa
is in Nairobi. Kibera slum houses over 1 million people who live with
extremely meager resources and indeed nowhere near a dollar a day.

Nairobi has one of the fastest growing capital markets in the world
and amazing. It is the home of very many nationalities, very
hospitable people and some of the super rich of the world. Yet more
than half of the population lives in very filthy slums.  It is a
tourist haven and with super modern hotels and restaurants and some of
the fastest growing companies in the world such as Safaricom a
subsidiary of the British Vodafone, in the telecommunications sector.
Indeed it's much anticipated Initial listing in the Kenyan Stock
Market; Nairobi Stock exchange (NSE) is likely to be overwhelmed in
with too much oversubscription by Kenyans and overseas investors.

A land of contrast indeed. Nairobi happens to be the capital city of
Kenya. It is the seat of the government and where the Kenyan
parliament seats. Kenyan members of parliament are some of the world's
well remunerated MP's. One of the major achievements of the last
parliament which was dissolved by the Kenyan president in October 2007
was the revolutionary Constituency Development Fund (CDF). But what
did the revolution achieve? So much but a lot of these funds is
alleged to have been misused by the MP's and their cronies.

Kenya as said is a land of great and endless opportunities but with a
lot of political, economical and social challenges. The tourism
industry in Kenya which is reputed to have the potential to completely
wipe out poverty is on the rise. With so much beauty one wonders why
Kenya cannot surpass France which receives over 80 million tourists
per annum. Blame government polices, poor infrastructure, past
political problems and so on.

Poverty is a country's waking nightmare! Why so much poverty amidst
plenty of opportunities achieved and missed! A very strange and
contrasting phenomenon! To remind Nairobi has the following among
others big slums; Kibera,  Mukuru kwa Reuben, Mukuru kwa Njenga,
Mukuru kwa Maina, Mathare, Kitui Ndogo, Mathare, Kangemi, Kware
(ongata Rongai) etc.  These slums provide some of the world's most
human degrading conditions. Lack of food, lack of social amenities,
lack of space, lack of privacy, lack of hope you name it! The current
government has tried a lot in giving free primary education, but it
can only do much. The people in slums are living worse than the famous
Kenyan wildlife by very far.

A visit in one of the slums Kitui Ndogo reveals some scaring if not
pathetic conditions. It took none other than a Portuguese
Philanthropist Laura Vasconcellos to see for herself people living in
very pathetic and sorry conditions in a country famous for many things
among them wildlife, athletics and a growing democracy not to forget a
country which has provided the world with some of the best brains in
many fields and a very hard working population inside the country and
in the Diaspora.

Laura Vasconcellos President of ADDHU a Portuguese based International
humanitarian organization visited the country in October to review a
fact finding mission organized by her organization partner in Kenya
called Capital Youth Caucus Association (CYCA) led by Mr. Armstrong
O'Brian Ongera,Jnr. who took her to visit Kitui Ndogo slums among other
areas in the country. What see saw must have baffled her!

On 20th October 2007 she and Brian visited the slum and made various
donations to Orphans and sanitary pads to teenage mothers and on 28th
of the same month before Laura flew out of the country her with the
company of O'Brian and some other officials visited an Orphanage in
Kitui Ndogo and made some donations.

What must surprise many in the developed world is that in Kenya where
MP's live large there are people in all of their 210 constituencies

lives are just too miserable completely out of range with the life
styles of the MP's and the rich in a poor country.

It is worrying how many donors the poor in slums and villages in
Nairobi, in Kenya, in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia and many other
poverty stricken areas of this world are needed to lift the masses out
of the present day miseries. How many donors we dare ask? How many
CDF's probably? How much of free education do we need? How many UN?
How many African Union?

To the Laura and O'Brian Ongera's of this world we wish them well. A
fair guess is the world needs many of these! But if the political and
trade systems of the world were made fairer the world can be better!

Together, we shall overcome!

Sincerely,

From the CYCA Office of Humanitarian Assistance Coordination

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Zimbabwe situation and African woman.

It look’s we keep on watching the same “movie” all over again…and again…and again… Well, I refuse to see it one more time quietly and with my mouth shut. Is this Africa? No! I refuse to think on those terms! What about people? Children and women?

The United Nations is growing along with the problems that it should solve.

American taxpayers last year provided $439 million to the regular U.N. budget -- plus a headquarters in New York that the U.N. management wants to expand. Not only has this organization failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but on May 11, the insatiably brutal Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe was elevated by the United Nations to chair its Commission on Sustainable Development -- dealing with land, rural and economic development, and the environment.

Astonished, The Economist magazine (May 19) noted that Zimbabwe, once known as "the breadbasket of Africa," has had its agriculture "largely destroyed by its government's catastrophic policies."

This year, it was Africa's turn to lead the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the U.N.'s African members shamefully and inexcusably support Mugabe's government for that post.

Zimbabwe is a disaster area. The country's own Social Welfare Commission, as reported by The New York Times on Dec. 19, found that 63 percent of the rural population and 53 percent of the urban population cannot meet basic food requirements.

Under Mugabe's rule, Zimbabwe's inflation is the highest on the planet --  more than 2,200 percent.

The African nations voting to bestow "legitimacy" on Mugabe's terrorism against his own people closed their eyes and consciences to the fact -- as reported by The Economist -- that "every day desperate Zimbabweans cross the
Limpopo river, braving crocodiles and occasionally drowning, to try their luck in neighbouring South Africa. Trapped into illegality there, many are exploited and abused."

Meanwhile, the liberator of Zimbabwe from white rule into its present wasteland is planning a 2008 campaign for an additional six-year term and a $4 million museum (a "shrine") of his lifetime achievements.

Mugabe will surely win -- if not by acclamation then certainly through long-practiced intimidation. In May, for example, he forbade Zimbabwe journalists -- those who still risk beatings and prison for reporting the truth -- from marching in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day.
While the United Nations elevates Mugabe to alert the world on vital issues of sustainable development, Christopher Dell, who is ending a three-year assignment as U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, gave National Public Radio his assessment of the living hell Mugabe has created:

"The metaphor I have is that it is like a lake. And as the waters of the lake recede, more and more of the fish are being left to die in the mud. At the centre, the big fish are swimming around nicely and making huge fortunes, huge fortunes."

Metaphor turns into reality in this Dec. 17 dispatch by Erik German of Newsday from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe:

"A few miles south from empty luxury hotels in this once dazzling tourist spot, dozens of gaunt young men survive by scavenging food from the town dump. Alan Sibanda, 23, has been coming here ... for the past five years, scuffling with baboons and vultures for the least-rotten scraps. Since midsummer, garbage has been his main source of food."

I guess the U.N. members who voted to honor Mugabe by making Zimbabwe the head of the Commission on Sustainable Development didn't bother to interview Sibanda before the final ballot.

To cap the current (and chronic) disgrace of the United Nations, guess who the new officers of the U.N. Disarmament Commission are? The chair is Syria, home of abundantly armed warring factions -- and the vice chair, believe it
or not, is Iran, the leading prospect to blow up its region of the world. Having this proud stoker of nuclear destruction become second-in-command of the U.N. Disarmament Commission is like springing Jack Abramoff from prison
to fill the new vacancy at the World Bank.

In one of its series of editorials, "Your U.N. at Work," the May 19-20 Wall Street Journal said: "It's a shame the U.S. didn't respond to the outcome of these two 'leadership' elections (including Zimbabwe heading the Development
Commission) and walk away from both of these useless U.N. outfits."

It makes much more sense for us to walk away from the United Nations itself, period. There are other organizations that -- with more help from us and other concerned nations -- can feed the hungry and provide medical aid for those in need around the world. But Eleanor Roosevelt's dream of the United Nations serving as an international beacon of human rights has become a nightmare of millions of people's betrayed hopes.

The African woman

It is a bit like watching an unfolding tragedy on television. You can see the situation and to some extent appreciate its seriousness, but you cannot enter into the experience of those on the ground or fully comprehend their situation. Over time you also become inured to various situations – they seem to happen so often and eventually you turn off the television or switch to entertainment.

Mugabe has now been in power for over 26 years. After 5 years of exciting and rapid development and change the country went through a period of 10 years or so of mixed experience - some bad, some good, followed by a decade of
serious mistakes and growing corruption in all spheres of life. Challenged by civil society Mugabe retreated into a political kraal and simply refused to listen to any but the sycophants that surrounded him.

But there is another dimension to this sorry tale, which is not being told.That is, what is the impact on certain sectors of the population? Not white farmers - that has been beaten to death by the media who seem to see little else in the Mugabe tragedy, as this series is called. No I am talking about the impact on others - women for example.

The impact of the Mugabe crisis on women is perhaps the most telling of the consequences of this sort of thing, and yet it is almost completely ignored.If you take any of the measures by which the Mugabe crisis is measured in human rather than economic or political terms, the impact on women has been very much greater than on the population as a whole. In part this is due to cultural factors but in addition it is that women are just that much more vulnerable to social and economic collapse.

Lets look at just a few of these factors. First the question of life expectancy. This is a crude measure of the success or failure of a State - can it deliver a longer life expectancy (as a result of better nutrition, health care) than in the past?

The answer in Zimbabwe is that life expectancy has retreated a year for every year that Mugabe has been in power and that all of this retreat has taken place in the past 14 years. Zimbabwe now has a life expectancy less than that of Malawi. For women the situation is even worse with life expectancies now dipping below 30 years. The reasons are multiple - deteriorating nutrition, high costs of protein foods, deteriorating health care services and their cost. But to this we must add the re-emergence of
disease epidemics that we once thought were beaten - malaria, tuberculosis.

Then there is the Aids/HIV pandemic - Zimbabwe is in the forefront again in this sphere. We have one of the highest rates of infection in the world, high even by southern African standards. But one statistic sticks in my mind - that 58 per cent of all women between the age of 15 and 25 are HIV positive. - nearly 6 out of 10. Why? Well one of the things that Mugabe has done in the past decade is to create near perfect conditions for the spread of HIV and Aids. He has destroyed jobs, income-earning opportunities, and
enhanced insecurity of nearly everyone, stimulated labour migration to the point where it has become a national pastime. Rendered illegal the income earning possibilities of millions.

So more women than ever are in prostitution, or "temporary relationships" for security or income purposes. More families than ever are divided and separated. The cost of schooling has soared - so called "free education" now costs parents more than they can afford so it is the girls who lose out.
What does a 13-year-old do when she is kicked out of school and onto the street?

How do we measure the status of the health services? One simple measure is the status of women in childbirth. 400 000 women give birth to a child in Zimbabwe each year. This country now has the highest rate of mortality in childbirth in the world. And what does it take to save a woman's life in labour? More or less US$30.

Then there are the more simple things - like sanitary pads and nappies. What do you do when you cannot afford these simple, every day things. Use dirty rags and towels or old newspaper? Where is the dignity in this?

And what about clean water? in city after city, clean affordable water has become a nightmare as pumps break down and councils run out of chemicals. The men - they drink beer and coke, it is women and children who bear the effects of these failures.

At independence they boasted - free education for all, housing for all, health services for all by the year 2000. The reality is that none of this has been achieved, in fact the population has lost ground in all these areas in a self-imposed collapse that has impacted on our women and children most. Those who drive luxury cars with tinted windows and who live in mansions on other people's money must take prime responsibility for this, but it is also a disgrace for us all. If you are not engaged in this struggle for change and reform in Zimbabwe, then you are also responsible for this unfolding crisis and its impact on millions of women and their children.

Just look at this news: it happens out from despair…

Hundreds invade Zimbabwean primary school in search of diamonds
May 31, 2007, 7:59 GMT

Harare/Johannesburg - Hundreds of residents in the impoverished Harare suburb of Epworth invaded a local primary school after rumours spread that diamonds had been discovered in the playgrounds, reports said Thursday.

The fortune seekers, armed with picks and shovels and some carrying babies on their backs, disrupted classes, broke down a security wall at Chinamano Primary School and dug up school grounds in a frenzied search for gems, the state-controlled Herald newspaper said.

But all they found were pieces of quartz, according to the report.

The would-be diamond hunters were spurred on by recent stories of desperately poor villagers in the Marange district of eastern Zimbabwe becoming rich overnight following the discovery of real diamonds.

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Angola: Thousands Forcibly Evicted in Postwar Boom

In the economic boom since the end of Angola’s civil war in 2002, the Angolan government has forcibly evicted thousands of poor residents of the capital Luanda, usually with violence and almost always without compensation, Human Rights Watch and the Angolan organization SOS Habitat said in a report released in May. (Brussels, May  2007)

The 103-page report, “They Pushed Down the Houses: Forced Evictions and Insecurity of Tenure for Luanda’s Urban Poor,” documents 18 mass evictions in Luanda that the Angolan government carried out between 2002 and 2006. In these evictions, which affected some 20,000 people in total, security forces destroyed more than 3,000 houses, and the government seized many small-scale cultivated land plots. These large-scale evictions violated both Angolan and international human rights law, and have left many Angolans homeless and destitute with no access to a legal remedy.  
 
“Millions of Angolans were displaced during the civil war, but since then the government has forcibly evicted thousands more from their homes in the capital,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s post war policies have resulted in the destruction of thousands of homes and repeated violations of human rights.”  
 
Thousands of Angolans remain vulnerable to forced evictions caused by the government’s failure to address widespread insecurity of land tenure. The majority of Luanda’s estimated 4 million residents hold no formal title to their house or land. Inadequate laws on land and urban management due to lack of implementing regulations and the absence of provisions that protect against forced evictions, weak enforcement of laws and ineffective real estate registration procedures put thousands at risk.  
 
“Most of the evictees are poor and vulnerable Angolans; their houses were demolished and many were left only with the clothes they were wearing,” said Luiz Araujo, director of SOS Habitat, an Angolan nongovernmental organization that focuses on housing rights. “Millions of Luanda’s residents will remain vulnerable to forced evictions unless the government takes immediate steps to end forced evictions completely and address the insecurity of land tenure in this city.”  
 
The report provides evidence that forced evictions were neither sporadic nor isolated events in Luanda. Instead, the evictions represent a pattern of abusive conduct on the part of the Angolan government that has not significantly changed. To date, the authorities have neither taken the steps necessary to ensure forced evictions end, nor have they provided accountability for abuses associated with these evictions. The government has also failed to compensate the vast majority of evictees as it is required to do under Angolan and international law.  
 
Evictees told Human Rights Watch and SOS Habitat that police officers and local government officials carried out evictions with brutal violence and excessive use of force. Police officers, sometimes accompanied by members of private security companies, fired shots in the air or on the ground to intimidate the unarmed population. Police often arbitrarily detained evictees, and many of those arrested told Human Rights Watch and SOS Habitat that they were physically abused while in police custody. Human rights defenders present during evictions were harassed and sometimes arbitrarily arrested.  
 
The Angolan government failed to provide affected communities with adequate information about the purpose of their eviction and to consult them about possible alternative solutions to their forcible removal. In the “informal settlements” where the majority of Luanda’s population lives with unregistered tenure, residents were evicted with little or no notice. The government did not ascertain what rights people had to the land they occupied before evicting them.  
 
The government also failed to provide accurate information about the body that issued the eviction order, its legal grounds, and the appropriate body for appealing such decisions. The authorities carried out these forced evictions without a proper and consistent procedure to determine the form or amount of compensation due to individual evictees.  
 
The Angolan government justifies the evictions on the grounds that it needs the land for public interest development projects or that it is removing alleged trespassers from state land. While the government claims that it is trying to improve living conditions in Luanda, it is, in fact, making such conditions worse for the most economically vulnerable by evicting thousands of them and by depriving them of the necessary assistance to help the evictees re-establish elsewhere.  
 
“Many people cultivated and lived in these areas for decades; others settled according to custom, with the permission of elders,” said Araujo. “The government never formally or legally expropriated the land people occupied or gave them a chance to claim their rights to the land.”  
 
The evictions documented in this report were carried out in violation of Angolan and international law. Angola is a party to both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and is obliged to protect everyone from arbitrary or unlawful interference with their home and family, as well as take steps to realize the right to adequate housing. Forced evictions violate both these basic obligations and result in multiple other human rights violations.  
 
“The Angolan government may expropriate private land and forcibly evict residents only in the most exceptional circumstances,” Takirambudde said. “These evictions could only be justified if they were based on a clearly identified public interest, carried out in accordance with the law, and with clear safeguards for the rights of the affected communities, including consultation, a right to challenge the expropriation, and adequate compensation.”  
 
Unless the Angolan government meaningfully halts forced evictions by consulting with communities affected by planned forced removals and ensuring compliance with all procedural safeguards, Luanda’s urban poor will continue to be subject to displacement and at risk of human rights abuses.  
 
Human Rights Watch and SOS Habitat urged the Angolan government to follow the UN Comprehensive Human Rights Guidelines on Development-Based Displacement, in implementing any future development projects and to apply legal and procedural protections that include adequate and reasonable notice of the date of eviction for any proposed future evictions. The government must provide timely information to all affected individuals that includes the alternative purpose for which the land is to be used, proper identification of staff carrying out the evictions, and the availability of legal remedies.  
 
Human Rights Watch and SOS Habitat also called on the government to investigate all allegations of excessive use of force by police and government officials, as well as of other human rights abuses related to forced evictions, and bring those responsible to justice. The government should urgently provide assistance, including alternative accommodation to all those affected by forced evictions and adequate compensation to all victims of past forced evictions who have not received compensation.  

Accounts from Evictees:  
 
“They arrived and didn’t talk to anyone ... and they pushed down the houses… There was time for nothing … we couldn’t take anything out. They broke my bed, my oven; they ran over everything. I tried to do something and they took me. I was trying to get my stuff out and they threw me in the police car.”  
—C.A., 35-year-old woman evicted from the neighbourhood Cambamba II  
 
“I got here at the same time as L.M. My house was broken in 26 of September, 2005. I could not save anything that was inside. It was 14 by nine square meters. It was finished and painted. If there was anything good left – doors, windows – they would take it. This is all I got left [showing the door knob].”  
—F.J., 90-year-old evictee from the neighbourhood of Bairro da Cidadania  
 
“I ran to get my wife and my child and take them out of the house. We left holding each other, and they came to beat us with batons. We continued to hold each other, and they continued to beat us, pushed us and threw us to the ground. At the end, there were eight policemen hitting me and my wife, holding our one-year-old baby. Then they threw me into the police car … At the police station, they beat me with broom sticks … They said we would receive 30 catanadas (beatings with the flat part of a catana, or machete) each one. Fifteen in the hand and 15 on the backside.”  
—H.J., 22-year-old evictee from the neighbourhood of Cambamba II  
 
“We want to expose our situation. If the government wants the land, then compensate us for the purchase price and regularization expenses already paid, or give us another decent location to live, where there are schools and hospitals. We’re not requiring this land, but everything that we have put into it; this is our right!”  
—G.T., 54-year-old evictee from the neighbourhood of Bairro da Cidadania

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Violation of the Children Rights

The global scandal of violence against children is a horror story too often untold. With malice and clear intent, violence is used against the members of society least able to protect themselves—children in school, in orphanages, on the street, in refugee camps and war zones, in detention, and in fields and factories. In its investigations of human rights abuses against children, Human Rights Watch has found that in every region of the world, in almost every aspect of their lives, children are subject to unconscionable violence, most often perpetrated by the very individuals charged with their safety and well-being.

Children are exposed to other human rights abuses as well. Millions have no access to education, work long hours under hazardous conditions, are forced to become soldiers, or languish in orphanages or detention centres where they endure inhumane conditions and daily assaults on their dignity.

These abuses persist because children have few mechanisms for reporting violence and other human rights violations. They may be reluctant to speak out for fear of reprisals. And because they are children, their complaints are often not taken seriously. Even when children do make reports or abuse is exposed, perpetrators are rarely investigated or prosecuted. Those in a position to take action may be complicit in the abuse, reluctant to discipline or prosecute a colleague, or fearful of negative publicity. Adults who witness abuse by their own colleagues and attempt to report it may be fired for speaking up.

The year 2005 marked the fifteenth year of the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the landmark treaty that guarantees children the right to be free from discrimination, to be protected in armed conflicts, to be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, to be free from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, to receive age-appropriate treatment in the justice system, and to be free from economic exploitation and other abuses, among other rights.   Achieving these rights remains a challenge.  Governments must take stronger action to implement the convention's provisions and fulfil their promises to the children of the world.

Child Soldiers
Child soldiers who fought in the Angolan civil war have been excluded from demobilization programs, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. April marks the one-year anniversary of the agreement that brought peace to mainland Angola in 2002. Both the largest opposition group, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the government used child soldiers in the war. Children's rights groups have estimated that as many as 11,000 children were involved in the last years of the fighting. Some children received weapons and arms training and fought in the conflict. Many others acted as porters, cooks, spies and labourers. One year after the conflict ended in mainland Angola, some UNITA soldiers who are 18 or older have been incorporated into the national army and police. Others were demobilized in a national program and have received needed assistance. But child soldiers, many of whom performed the same duties as adults, were denied these benefits. The use of children in armed conflict is in violation of Angolan and international law. Angola also has obligations to provide for the recovery and reintegration of all children affected by conflict.

Throughout the world an unknown number of children, most likely in the millions, are kept in orphanages and other non-penal institutions. Many of these children are kept in grossly substandard facilities and provided with inhumane care; some are left to die. Ironically, those responsible for nurturing and providing for the children they take into their care often physically and sexually abuse the children, and subject them to other cruel and degrading treatment. Even in institutions that are clean and provide adequate food, staff often neglect children, leaving them to lie alone in cribs or small beds with no stimulation, play, or adult attention.

Human Rights Watch has looked into the treatment of children in orphanages in three countries: Romania, China, and Russia.

In Ceausescu's Romania, we found in 1990 that doctors forbidden to acquire medical information from outside the country had carried out a practice of giving small blood transfusions to children to "strengthen" them. Sadly, large numbers of children have contracted HIV as a result. In addition, children suffered from inadequate food, housing, clothing, medical care, lack of stimulation or education, and neglect. Disabled children suffered even grimmer conditions and treatment, with many malnourished and diseased.

In China, Human Rights Watch documented in 1996 a secret world of starvation, disease, and unnatural death—a world into which thousands of Chinese orphans and abandoned children disappear each year. The report, Death by Default: A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages, revealed a pattern of cruelty, abuse, and malign neglect that results in staggering mortality rates in state institutions. The Chinese government's own statistics revealed that in 1989 a staggering number of abandoned children admitted to China's orphanages were dying in institutional care. Many institutions appear to be operating as little more than assembly lines for the elimination of unwanted orphans, with an annual turnover of admissions and deaths far exceeding the number of beds available.

In Russia, children were abandoned to the state at a rate of more than 100,000 per year. In a 1998 report, Abandoned to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages, Human Rights Watch documented the brutal treatment of these children, thousands of whom are exposed to appalling levels of cruelty and neglect. They were beaten, locked in freezing rooms for days at a time, and often subjected to degrading treatment by staff. From the moment the state assumes their care, "orphans" in Russia, 95 percent of whom have at least one living parent, are shockingly mistreated. Infants classified as disabled are segregated in "lying-down" rooms, where they are changed and fed, but bereft of stimulation and essential medical care. Those who are officially diagnosed as "imbeciles" or "idiots" at age four are condemned to life in little more than a warehouse, where they may be restrained in cloth sacks, tethered by a limb to furniture, denied stimulation, training, and education. Some lie half-naked in their own filth, and are neglected, sometimes to the point of death. The "normal" children, those deemed to be "educable", are subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by institution staff. These children suffer a lifelong stigma that robs them of fundamental economic, social, civil and political rights guaranteed by international treaties.

We hope, through our work on orphanages and other non-penal institutions, to raise international awareness about the plight of children doomed to death or to life stunted by inhumane and degrading conditions, and to make significant changes in the way orphaned and abandoned children are treated throughout the world.

Refugee children suffer a form of double jeopardy. A denial of their human rights made them refugees in the first place; and as child refugees they are also frequently abused, as the most vulnerable category of an already vulnerable population.
Refugee children are among the most vulnerable children in the world. Not only have they suffered from war or other forms of persecution in their countries of origin which forced them to flee their homes, but many refugee children continue to suffer human rights abuses in countries of asylum. More than half of the world’s refugee population are children, yet their rights and special protection needs as children are frequently neglected.

In dozens of countries around the world, children have become direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, some 300,000 children are serving as soldiers in current armed conflicts. These young combatants participate in all aspects of contemporary warfare. They wield AK-47s and M-16s on the front lines of combat, serve as human mine detectors, participate in suicide missions, carry supplies, and act as spies, messengers or lookouts.
Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Many are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. Others join armed groups out of desperation. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children perceive armed groups as their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed.

Child soldiers are being used in more than thirty countries around the world. Human Rights Watch has interviewed child soldiers from countries including Angola, Colombia, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda. In Sierra Leone, thousands of children abducted by rebel forces witnessed and participated in horrible atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, amputations, rape, and burning people alive. Children forced to take part in atrocities were often given drugs to overcome their fear or reluctance to fight.

In Colombia, tens of thousands of children have been used as soldiers by all sides to the country’s ongoing bloody conflict.
Girls are also used as soldiers in many parts of the world. In addition to combat duties, girls are subject to sexual abuse and may be taken as “wives” by rebel leaders in Angola, Sierra Leone and Uganda. In Northern Uganda, Human Rights Watch interviewed girls who had been impregnated by rebel commanders, and then forced to strap their babies on their backs and take up arms against Ugandan security forces.

Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the definition of a child is any person under the age of eighteen, unless under the law applicable to the child majority is attained earlier. However, article 38, governing children and armed conflict, uses fifteen as the minimum age for recruitment and participation in hostilities. This low standard of protection is a glaring and troubling anomaly among the convention’s other strong provisions.

Several years after the convention’s adoption, a U.N. working group was created to draft an optional protocol to the convention, that would raise the minimum age for recruitment and participation in hostilities to eighteen. However, as the 10th anniversary of the convention’s adoption arrives, agreement on the optional protocol still has not been reached, largely because of opposition by governments who continue to recruit minors.

Efforts to stop the use of child soldiers continue to grow. In 1998, the recruitment of children under the age of fifteen and their use in hostilities was identified as a war crime in the statute of the International Criminal Court. Once established, the court will have jurisdiction to prosecute those responsible for the use of child soldiers. The use of children as soldiers has also been recognized as a child labour issue. A new international treaty banning the worst forms of child labour, adopted in June of 1999 by the International Labour Organization, prohibits the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts.

In 1998, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers was set up in order to campaign for a strong optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which would prohibit any recruitment or use of children under the age of eighteen in armed conflict. Formed by six international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the coalition now works with national campaigns in more than thirty countries around the world, mobilizing political will and public pressure for an end to the use of children as soldiers. Its activities have included a series of high profile regional conferences focused on the use of children as soldiers in Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

Despite this growing momentum, efforts to stop the use of child soldiers have not yet reached fruition. The recruitment of child soldiers continues around the world, those responsible for their recruitment escape justice, and key governments continue to resist efforts to establish and enforce the prohibitions necessary to end the use of children as soldiers.

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The Changing Face of Mae Sot, Thailand’s “Little Burma”

Whenever I go to Mae Sot I see gradual and slow changes. But on my latest visit, after an absence of almost eight months, I saw evidence of rapid growth.
 
Everywhere I went, I saw new houses, land development projects, restaurants, gas stations, guest houses—even coffee shops with wireless internet connection had arrived.
 
I also saw new construction and an expansion of tents at the immigration office near the Friendship Bridge, connecting Thailand and Burma. The tents shelter hundreds of Burmese migrants, many of them women, waiting to be deported. I suspect this is not an uncommon sight in Mae Sot. A few years ago, I witnessed a major crackdown in Mae Sot where thousands of Burmese were rounded up in one day and sent back to Myawaddy. But they sneaked back.

I am sure this group will also find its way back to Mae Sot, even though wages on the black economy are low—a house maid in Mae Sot earns 800-1,000 baht (less than US $50) a month.

Step into Mae Sot’s food market any morning and you’ll see many Burmese strolling around and chatting in their language without fear. Mae Sot is still very much “Little Burma.”
 
I paid a brief visit to Dr Cynthia’s clinic, known as the Mae Tao clinic, near the airport. She had just finished meetings with donors, and told me her clinic needs 50 million baht ($1.4 million) this year to cover expenses and to treat the around 100,000 patients she registers annually. Yet some donors who attended the meeting told me a more realistic figure would be 75 million baht ($2.1 million).
 
The clinic faced a serious funding shortage in 2004, and Cynthia and her medics don’t want to experience the same problem again.
More than 300 medical staff are employed at her clinic, treating patients from Burma and locally resident Burmese. I noticed that many I remembered from my previous visits, since 1995, had gone. Many well-trained and talented medical staff had emigrated to the West under resettlement programs. New, younger staff had joined her clinic, but one senior medic there told me that the younger generation receiving training were also looking for opportunities to resettle in third countries.
 
This presents a serious crisis for many groups along the border—especially in refugee camps, where well-trained and talented refugees who are teachers, medics and community leaders are leaving for third countries. Finding replacements for them is a major hurdle.
 
Cynthia, known as Burma’s “Mother Teresa,” remains committed to providing medical services to her patients and training for her staff.  Thai Ministry of Health officials in Mae Sot are helpful and admire her work and dedication.
 
The clinic has come a long way since opening illegally in Thailand in late 1988. It now shoulders much of Thailand’s burden in caring for Burmese patients with malaria, TB and such infectious diseases as HIV/AIDS. Now the clinic is well-established and well- recognized, with a number of dedicated foreign physicians working for her as volunteers.

Cynthia told me most of her patients are suffering from malaria, although increasing numbers of HIV/AIDS cases are being treated.  A pilot project to treat a dozen HIV/AIDS patients with antiretroviral drugs is planned for April in association with Mae Sot hospital. Individual donors from Western nations have also offered financial support for some HIV/AIDS patients, but this is not enough, she said. She also sees increasing number of patients coming to her clinic from inside Burma.

An international donor has offered to finance the construction of a new clinic for Cynthia, which would relieve the increasing pressure on her present premises. Meanwhile, Dr Simon Tha, a well-known Karen physician and peace negotiator between Karen rebel groups and the Burmese regime, is reported to be opening up a Japanese-financed hospital in Myawaddy, the Burmese town opposite Mae Sot.

I wondered aloud if patients from Burma and Karen State might seek treatment at this hospital when it opens, instead of visiting Cynthia’s clinic. “It depends on how he [Dr Simon Tha] runs his hospital,” a donor told me. 
 
After visiting Dr Cynthia, I dined with a well-known dissident who has been living in the border area for several years. He didn’t conceal his frustration when we talked about Burmese politics and life in exile. “We are just surviving,” he said.
 
His organization receives grants from some US-based foundations, but he said he and his group were sick of asking for money and answering too many questions from donors. “I know they don’t read our reports,” he said—and I could sense the pride and frustration in his mind.

At least, he doesn’t have to care for the sick, only about his politically ailing homeland. The struggle for a free Burma needs money, though, and that’s scarce. “With money, we can hold together and regain our momentum.” He told me about funding cuts facing his colleagues and organizations along the border.
 
“I have committed myself to the revolution for almost 20 years and I have nothing,” he said.
 
But he wants to hold on for a few more years to see what changes will come to his country and what his organization can do to help. But, with no sign of Burma’s generals relinquishing power in a hurry, he also has to think of a personal exit strategy. “In 2008, I need to think of myself,” he sighed.
 
His frustration and disappointment are not just directed at the regime. He dismisses Asean as hopeless, Burma’s neighbours as dishonest, and believes that powerful nations are too busy with non-Burma issues. “The US is trapped in the Middle East,” he complained.

“I buy lottery tickets these days,” he laughed. I asked him what he would do if he won. “Well, we will see if we can teach a lesson or two to the regime.”
 
“Are you going to buy arms?” I asked. He chuckled, but gave me an honest answer: “We can have some good fights or guerrilla warfare. We can try.” Perhaps this is part of his intention to regain momentum, and I fully understand that he could not say this to his donors in the US or Europe. “Don’t worry, you have Rambo in town,” I joked, referring to the new Hollywood movie featuring a rescue raid into Burma.
 
We finished our drinks, paid up and walked out of restaurant. Mae Sot lay quiet, dark and dead to the world. But in the darkness, I imagined the Burmese hiding in the rice fields, sleeping in small huts or restless behind prison bars. And I saw faces in the faint street lights, smiling and waiting for customers. I suspect they might not agree with me when I say Mae Sot has changed.

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Artist Maung Maung Tinn illustrates grief-striken faces of arrested Burmese migrants in a police van.

Children of the World

I have decided to start this article with a common sentence. It’s unavoidable, for it says exactly what I feel in this very moment.

As we often say, “Children are the best thing in the world”, and they truly are!

But being so, why are they the ones that suffer the most, the ones that must carry in their shoulders the weight and the consequences of moments, causes and actions that are not their own?

Today, I am not talking about children in Lisbon, nor, I dare to write, the Portuguese children. Those, in their vast majority, have always an opportunity from which they can take advantage. Today, I am writing about the children of the world! But not the world that we know, not our everyday world, no.

I am writing about the children who are already condemned when they are born.

The ones that we look to, and give us a smile when we focus our sight in their eyes. Some of whom even thank us!

I have met so many children wherever I have been to. And they are all so beautiful. Some are extremely innocent, and others are in extreme pain, some lie and some reach out their hand to me. Some smile back at me, but they are all poor, performing a constant fight to achieve their daily piece of bread. They all have less opportunities than most of the children we know, a life sentenced from the day were born.

They all grow and live in the same place, and their eyes can’t reach beyond the fence. They do not know any other odors or flavors; they do not see any other colors apart from those around their everyday environment.

The air they breed will always be the same and even if their ambitions would go further, they will always wake up at the same time; they will have a day exactly like the previous one and sleep in the same bed every night. Some of those children are sad, many are happy, and it is not up to us to change the dreams of these children, nevertheless we do need to provide tem with different ways of dreaming and broadening their horizons. We must not allow them to be abused, raped, kidnapped, used for child prostitution, nor be hungry or dirty.

The grey in their lives must make way for pink!

Children are the best thing in the world; they are every smile and joy. They are also the most suffering and painful tears.

Children of the world are the children of San Miguel, in Costa Rica, with whom I have had the opportunity to play for three weeks, they are the children of Maputo, in Mozambique, with their dark skin and marble white teeth, who asked me for money to allow me to take their picture, they are the children in Brazil, who asked me for ice creams or tried to fool me to get some coins, they are the children in Cambodia, who become soldiers since their early years, there are the little Chinese girls dropped off by their parents in orphanages, the little boys in Díli, in East Timor, joyful and spoiled, just like my friend Sonia, who is there for six months now cooperating with a non-profit organization, says.
The children of the world are all of the children, the ones we already know and the ones that will never smile at us, the ones that we hugged one day and died the next, without giving us time to reach them back, they are the boys with huge tummies, the ones that die from chickenpox, the ones that have killed and are guilty of nothing, innocent children or forced-to-be adults!

But… but we don’t care, do we?

Tatiana Figueiredo

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The sexual traffic is the slavery of the 21st century; and however it is one of world industries of growth. To include/understand at which point this traffic is impudent, assemble on the 2nd floor of the Wine storehouse Hour II Hotel in the capital of Kampuchea.
It is like an aquarium: behind a wall of glass are tens of teenagers in white light behaviour, each one with a number. The customer orders a girl by his number and the manager delivers it later a few moments in a private room. 250 girls are confined and work in this labyrinth of cells of 6 stages.

The highest woman in rank in the Cambodia police force ordered a raid on the Hour Wine storehouse and thus saved 83 girls. They were taken along in a refuge managed by the AFESIP, an ONG, lead by Somaly Mam and her husband. 

But the following day, the boss of the traffic of girls took their revenge and attacked the refuge. With 30 men, some carrying of the military uniforms and driving jeeps carrying of the number plates of the army. They inserted the grid of entry of the refuge, beat one of the women of the personnel and brought back all the girls to the brothel.

The woman police officer who had ordered the raid was reprimanded and suspended by her superiors.
The state drug traffickers were known; Cambodia could be the first state “sex-trafficker”. The trade of the sex is controlled massively by the organized crime and the criminals use their profits to buy politicking and civil servants.

Moving back in front of nothing, the brothel continues Afesip in justice and claims to him 1,7 million dollars of damage-interests, thus hoping to make them leave the country. The AFESIP received many death threats. “They is very dangerous and I am very afraid for my safety,” known as Pierre Legros, a founder of the AFESIP, which engaged 8 bodyguards to protect his/her children. His Cambodian wife, Somaly Mam, also founder and president of AFESIP, was threatened 2 times a revolver on the temple.
At the 19th century, the civilized world recognized that slavery was a moral spot on humanity and protested against him. Then why should we accept this slavery of the 21st century, which imprisons young girls from the age of 8 until 15 years old in brothels and condemns them to die of the AIDS?

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Thousands of children cross the border between Thailand and Cambodia every day to look for work. All too often, they find exploitation and abuse.

25 Jul 2006 | Agence France Presse

Cambodian police said Wednesday they had freed 10 Vietnamese women who
were allegedly forced to work in a brothel in the quiet coastal backwater
of Kampot province.

Police raided the brothel and rescued the women on Monday, following a tip
from Vietnamese authorities, the provincial deputy police chief Nuon Sary
said. "They said they were over 18 years old, but they look smaller and younger
than that," he told AFP by telephone.

"They have been told to say that they had agreed to work as sex workers
themselves. But in fact, they had been tricked into going to the brothel,"
Nuon Sary said.

Police also arrested the brothel's owners who include a Cambodian military
police officer and his 40-year-old Vietnamese wife, he said.

Nicholas Kristof article on the slavery of the 21st century( 2005)

Poipet, Cambodia

When I describe the sexual traffic like the slavery of 21st, I am sure that many readers raise the shoulders and think that it is a hyperbole.
2 years ago, at the age of 15 or 16 years it is not sure of its date of birth--Sray Rath decided to work in Thailand for 2 months to offer a gift to his/her mother for Kampuchean New Year's day.
But the traffickers who were supposed to insert it illegally to Thailand as plunger in a restaurant have it in the place taken along to Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur the capital, with four other girls. There, they were sequestered in a bar karaoke which was also a brothel and one forced them to have sexual intercourse with customers.

SR refused with indignation. “Then the owner was annoyed. He struck me with the face, with the two hands. The mark remained during 2 weeks.”
It was the beginning of the hell. The girls were forced to work 15 hours per day, 7 days per week; they neither were paid nor authorized to leave. It was to them interdict to ask the customers to carry a condom.
“They gave us only food, not much, because the customers do not love the large girls.”
They had been informed that they would be killed if they tried to escape. But they were so desperate that one evening, locked up in an apartment on the 10th floor, they were so desperate that they nailed clothes line with linen long a 15 cm broad board and installed it between their window and the window of the building of opposite, to 3,50 or 4 meters. And they are launched on the board, on ten floors with the top of the street.
“We thought that, even if we die, it was better than to remain where we were. If we had remained, we would have died in any event.” the girls declare.

AFESIP, created in 1996 in Cambodia ,an ONG which fights against the procuring and the traffic of children is threaten constantly since it  became active:

“I have completely enough! proclaimed Somaly Mam, There’s about eight years that I fight. I do not have any more the moral one…” Somaly Mam chairs, in Cambodia, Afesip, an ONG international supported by the UNICEF and the European Union which was given for goal to fight against the traffic of children and the forced prostitution of the women. On December 8, a score of men, some armed with guns, made irruption in one of its centres, in Phnom Penh, and took on board 91 young women accommodated by the association. “They are the procurers and their friends, shows Somaly Mam. They announced that they were going to kill us, one by one.” Before leaving, they would have specified: “You, with your association, you do not have anything. Us, we have money. We can do all we want, even make dance the dead!”

Somaly Mam, sometimes, is close to believe them. “I have three contracts on my head”, she said. She does not walk, these times, without eight bodyguards. “We do not have any more life, explains her husband, the french Pierre Legros. We must also protect our children. And my wife will have to leave the country.” This business is undoubtedly the most violent episode of the history of this ONG which, however, it knew others. Created in 1996 by Somaly Mam - “Myself old victim, I wanted to learn with these girls the true life, the freedom” - the association, which employs 150 people, inquires into the establishments who exploit children or force women with prostitution and denounces them to the police force and  justice. Then the association helps the victims to be reintegrated. “ The big and real problem is not the prostitution on  itself, but the procuring”, insists Pierre Legros.

In eight years, the association became sufficiently strong to attack large establishments, like Chay Hour, a hotel which would employ 200 male prostitutes. They would sell, in particular, rather expensive virginities. The police force, on the indications of Afesip, intervened on December 7. It challenged eight people suspected of procuring and temporarily placed 84 girls in a centre of Afesip. But very quickly the counter-orders came from the top. The suspects were released. “The talks to disentangle which was agreeing, which was not it had started when the macs made irruption, Somaly Mam tells. They took along seven other girls who were front there.” On December 9, about fifty prostitutes taken again in hand by the hotel carried felt sorry for against Afesip. The person in charge police who helped association is about to be dismissed. “The Kampuchean government takes risks for its reputation by protecting such an establishment, whereas one counts in this country around 40 000 exploited women and children”, Mu Sochua prevents, which was a Minister for the female Businesses until 2003. And Somaly Mam repeats: “My staff is afraid. Everyone is afraid.”

The traffic of the women and young girls is in clear expansion these last years, because of cleavage always growing, political, economic and social, between rich countries and emergent countries. Tens of thousands of women and young girls are thus adulterated in Southeast Asia, from the rural medium towards the urban environment, and of this one towards the international one (Americas, South Korea, Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Singapore, Taiwan). This very lucrative illicit trade, is in third world position behind drug and the weapons, but is less dangerous than those for its organizers.

Because it is geographically located in the middle of continental Indo-China, and also, in a certain way, in the centre of the ASEAN, that it is slightly populated (approximately 12 million inhabitants), of modest size (surface: 185.035 km2), allowing profitable investigations the plan of the results to a restricted team, and because, placed between Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, it appears, by definition, like a country of “transit” at the regional level, Kampuchea is an adequate platform for the study and the comprehension of the human traffic at end of sexual slavery in Southeast Asia, which progress at the rate/rhythm of universalization.


Since 1996, more than two thousand women and young girls passed in the centres of AFESIP. As from January 2004, the capacity of reception of those increased about 300%, allowing the simultaneous assumption of responsibility of two hundred victims Kampuchea, and thirty in the centre open to Vietnam (with Ho Chi Minh-city), without counting the centres of medical care and psychological free recently opened to the prostitutes, as well in Phnom Penh as at HCM-city, where one awaits thousands of visits annually.

If one looks at the chart of the continental Southeast Asia in connection with human traffic, a strange funnel is visualized at once, schematically made up by Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, country on the relatively high standard of living which one can regard as “takers of women”, whereas countries around: Burma, Laos, China, Kampuchea, Vietnam, economically in difficulty or, at best, emergent, are rather “donors of women”.

The human traffic, like all the other illicit trades (drugs, weapons, etc), imposes the crossing of borders. It is, just like slavery, “external” when the victims cross the limit established between country. It is the case when young women Vietnamese are incited to go to Malaysia via Kampuchea, Laos and Thailand. For these reasons, the study of the human traffic imposes a not national approach (only Kampuchea, in the case of the example given) but regional (Kampuchea, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, to Burma and China). The human traffic can also be “internal” when the phenomenon looks within the same country, an area, a social layer, a particular ethnic group, from which the victims come in mass.

In addition, the human traffic arises as a total social phenomenon because it touches with all the aspects of the human life and that, to include/understand it, analyze it and if required try to fight it, it is imperative to approach it according to various points of view, to connect then, i.e. by using several disciplines: it is the point of view and not the object which defines a science, like explained it Andre-George Haudricourt.

On the complex topic of the human traffic, alliance between fundamental research and industrial research are carried out almost naturally insofar as, taking the case of an ONG like AFESIP, if this one claims to act with relevance and utility, it must as a preliminary include/understand the situations, complexes; this very upstream of the problem concerned. In the case of the human traffic with sexual goal it is also necessary to seek to know, always on a regional level, which was the state prostitution and gangster of the decades before, in order to give a base of comparison on a diachronic axis, in addition to the analysis compared with the plans space and cultural. It is necessary to proceed to research on questions more general, impossible to circumvent, such as the incest, the matrimonial relationship and alliance, practices, the report/ratio with its own body, slavery, the debt, the honour, the report/ratio with the money, sexuality, the mother-child ratio or father-child, until the existence of parts of written or oral literature offering a determining social modelling, etc...

For Cambodian girls, education is antidote to poverty and sexual exploitation

AFESIP rehabilitation objectives are first and foremost, the protection of victims; second, to implement the victim centred approach through holistic care and welcome any persons who are willing to leave sex slavery conditions to our five residential centres with the long term goal of reintegration into society.

Welcome to AFESIP

AFESIP exists to combat trafficking in women and children for sex slavery; to care for and rehabilitate those rescued from sex slavery; to provide occupational skills and to reintegrate those rescued into the community in a sustainable and innovative manner. AFESIP also seeks to combat the causes and effects of trafficking and sex slavery through outreach work in AIDS prevention; through advocacy and campaigning; through representation and participation in women’s issues at national, regional and international forums.

AFESIP Fair Fashion is an income generating activity that supports victims who have been trained in AFESIP rehabilitation shelters to return to a normal social life by following a sustainable reintegration process and attaining financial independence. The objective of our production centres in Cambodia and in Vietnam is to manufacture high quality products under the principles of Fair Trade.

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Child soldiers.

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