UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mrs Mary Robinson today urged Cambodian authorities to combat human trafficking through judicial reform and political will.
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Mrs Mary Robinson
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"Cambodia is a source, as well as a transit and receiving, country," she told a sitting of Cambodia's National Assembly.
"Vietnamese girls and women are trafficked into Cambodia, while children, women and men are sent to Thailand and other countries to do the most degrading work," she said.
Mrs Robinson welcomed recent efforts to stamp out the scourge, adding a firm political will and an effective judiciary was needed to break this cycle.
"Traffickers are able to operate with impunity because of inefficient law enforcement, compounded in some cases by official corruption," she said.
Cambodia has earned itself an unsavoury reputation as a haven for human trafficking and child sex offenders during the four years of peace it has enjoyed since the end of civil war.
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Mrs Robinson said Southeast Asia was a major centre of trafficking with 200,000 women and children bought and sold throughout the region.
However, Cambodia faced the additional problem of in-country trafficking with women traded from rural areas to provincial and tourist centres.
AFP