On February 13, the CNN Freedom Project featured a piece entitled “Hope for Vietnam’s Children of the Dump,” which seems particularly relevant to our discussions of human/child trafficking. The Freedom Project itself provides a wealth of facts about, resources on, and solutions to trafficking–making it a beneficial site to critically examine as a major source of public discourse on human trafficking. But we’ll save that critique for another time.
Though the video we watched in class showed how political unrest in Cambodia’s history led to domestic sex trafficking issues, this article adds another component to human trafficking there. Cambodian families fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s also ended up outside the country–in this case, in Vietnam. As the video below shows, the so-called (economic) “progress” of Vietnam is not accessible to many who live there. This is particularly evident for the 200 families–three generations– of Cambodian refugees who live and work on a trash heaps in Vietnam. The intersection of poverty and political instability in the lives of these refugees has put them in a place of desperation–exactly where the risk of human trafficking is the greatest.
Taking the problematic reporting here with a grain of salt for the time being, the extreme poverty these people live in goes without saying. It is confirmed by the report of the father offering to sell the Western reporters his “beautiful baby boy” (CNN, 2012). As Farr notes: “Trafficking is inextricably linked to poverty. Wherever privation and economic hardship prevail, there will be those destitute and desperate enough to enter into the fraudulent employment schemes that are the the most common intake systems in the world of trafficking” (Farr, 2004). Subsequently, it should come as no surprise that the people of this community are at great risk of being trafficked, particularly, with so many children living in the dumps, for the sex trade. Indeed, the article identifies the exact situation we have examined in multiple locales in class:
Human traffickers prey on these poor people’s desperation. Children are bought and sold here, some for as little as $100. The parents sell because they are tricked into believing that the buyer has good intentions, that their children will have a promising job and a promising future. They so badly want to help their sons and daughters escape poverty. Oftentimes, however, the children end up as sex slaves.
This account also reminds us of one of the main factors contributing to the perpetuation of sex trafficking: deception and coercion. “The trafficker looks like your mom, (the trafficker) doesn’t look like a bad guy,” said Caroline Nguyen Ticarro-Parker, the founder of the nonprofit Catalyst Foundation (CNN, 2012). As she explains in the video, these individuals spoke to parents specifically, offering them money up front for the their daughters, with the promise that they would be given work, and even potentially be returned to their families in a few years. This type of coercion is a trend among traffickers, as Engstom et al. note of Thailand, “traffickers…have employed increasingly sophisticated techniques to recruit girls from poor villages into the sex trade, emphasizing less deception and more financial incentives to their families” (2004).
Besides exemplifying a prime location of the situations traffickers prey on, as well as those traffickers’ methods for luring family members into selling their own daughters into the sex trade, the video has a valuable perspectives on creative solutions in particular locales. Particularly, those provided by education. In the case of the Catalyst School, its “main purpose is to prevent trafficking” (CNN, 2012). All of the initiatives of the school are informed by this specific objective. This makes it multilevel: giving the children cell phones (to call for help), increasing literacy rates (to be able to read signs in cities and report back to the school where they are, in the event they are taken), teaching students to run if strangers approach, and teaching parents the truth of what could happen to their children in the event they do sell them. The approach seems to be working: according to the article, “In 2006, before the school opened, more than 37 girls from the dumps were sold to traffickers by their parents, Ticarro-Parker said. In 2011, only four were sold” (CNN, 2012). The school is also making efforts to challenge cultural gender norms that put girls at greater risk to be trafficked. The video below talks about this and other beneficial outcomes of education more broadly, such as increased community awareness of trafficking risks, and increased happiness of children, who now aspire toward careers and a future beyond the dump. It also importantly identifies the fact that Catalyst has, over time, gained the support of local government officials. This is essential because “Trafficking is a reigonal problem and can only be addressed through bilateral and multilateral efforts” (Engstom et al., 2004).
Skip ahead to about halfway through, because the first half is mostly the same as the first video.
Catalyst seems to have a realistic approach to eliminating sex trafficking that could act as a model for other relief organizations. They are concerned with the material effects of poverty on children now, while trying to give them the tools needed to move beyond the immediate need for safety. They acknowledge the larger structural factors at work in perpetuating the sex trade, but also that their organization can potentially add to this epidemic. According to Ticarro-Parker,
“We’re not going to eliminate trafficking. We are not going to change this whole culture of girls feeling unworthy of themselves. But we’re going to change this group of girls. We’re going to change 200 girls. It’s going to happen, one girl at a time” (CNN, 2012).
What do you think about Catalyst’s model/method/approach? Do you think education can be helpful in contributing to the elimination of sex trafficking? Does it obscure the need more expansive solutions? Could this account be helpful for future work from a researcher perspective?
CNN Videos (2012, February 13). Children of the trash dump. [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2012/02/14/cfp-allen-vietnam-playground-2.cnn
Engstrom, D.W., Minas, S.A., Espinoza, M., & Jones, L. (2004). Halting the trafficking of women and children in Thailand for the sex trade: progress and challenges. Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation, 5, 193-206.
Farr, K. (2004). Sex trafficking: The global market in women and children. Worth Publishing.
youth & justice 
Rachel, thank you for your blog and for highlighting the projects of the Catalyst Foundation! Thanks to the NGO, this community in Southern Vietnam is more knowledgable about how to protect themselves against traffickers. The project seems to work on a micro-scale but I wonder how it could be replicated on a nation-wide scale? What would need to be done to influence public policy in Vietnam and other countries?
Rachel, thank you for your blog and for highlighting the good things the Catalyst Foundation is doing! Thanks to the NGO, this community in Southern Vietnam is more knowledgable about how to protect themselves against traffickers. But I wonder, what can be done to spread the word and replicate this model in other communities – in Vietnam and World-wide? For example, What would need to be done to influence public policy?
I agree with Nick. I think the Catalyst School, as presented in the video, represents a good example of a culturally relevant intervention that addresses the needs of these young children. Of course, we would like to see this intervention disseminated on a larger-scale, but first, we would need to empirically determine if it worked. If it did, then effort could be directed at tweaking (and evaluating) the intervention for other children/contexts. Of course, this is a very Western-based approach to program development, evaluation, and dissemination. Such an approach might not be feasible in Vietnam.
Although extreme poverty and the lack of law enforcement are mainly to blame for child sex trafficking in Cambodia, I think the Cambodian people’s casual attitudes toward sexual predation also contribute to the problem. Cambodians generally look up to foreigners, especially Westerners, as wealthy and benevolent. It’s unfortunate that some foreigners are in the country to take advantage of children.