Child Security in Asia: The Impact of Armed Conflict in Cambodia and Myanmar by Cecilia Jacob

Author:Cecilia Jacob [Jacob, Cecilia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9781134508853
Google: pbFtAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 20842855
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Governance

The RGC has been under a lot of international pressure to address child trafficking and sexual exploitation, largely due to negative media coverage and the heavy presence of donor partners inside the country, which has raised the profile of this specific issue. These initiatives are welcomed by the international community (Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2012: 106–8); however, the commitment of the Cambodian government to this issue has not been commensurate with efficient responses to widespread child protection issues such as child labour and domestic abuse, where governance efforts have been much weaker (Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons 2012: 107). Given external pressure over this issue combined with the RGC's dependence on foreign donors and need to create international legitimacy, government child protection reforms are best understood as a politicized rather than rights-based response to child insecurity in Cambodia.

At the national level, child insecurity in Cambodia has been addressed on a number of different fronts. Cambodia is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and the two optional protocols to the UNCRC have been legislated into national child laws. In 1995 the government created the Cambodian National Council for Children (CNCC) as the administrative body to oversee the implementation of the UNCRC throughout the relevant government departments. Hosted by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth (MOSAVY), CNCC meets regularly, produces a five-yearly report on the status of children's rights in Cambodia, and articulates the roles and responsibilities of specific departments to ensure that every clause in the UNCRC is looked after. The CNCC works closely with UNICEF in particular and has partnerships with members of the NGO community to carry out its work.

The CNCC has begun to set up child protection mechanisms in the provinces, an initiative driven primarily by UNICEF. Through the mechanism, incidences such as child abuse, trafficking or exploitation for labour should be reported to local authorities, who are required to take action at the appropriate level, such as ensuring appropriate police and legal assistance and where necessary ensuring that social welfare services are available to the child. This initiative has been assisted through numerous nation-wide and regional awareness-raising campaigns, educating communities on children's rights and on the dangers of traf-flicking and exploitation.

In addition to these explicit child protection efforts at the local level, protecting children from human trafficking is incorporated into national anti-human trafficking efforts. Emphasis has been given to the overarching problem of human trafficking, such as the new Cambodian Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation passed in 2008, the creation of the NTF, the Law Enforcement Against Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Children (LEASETC) project run by the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department in the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and the role of United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) in linking Cambodia's anti-trafficking efforts into the Greater Sub-Mekong regional efforts (known as the COMMIT process). The RGC has demonstrated its commitment to

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