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Today was day one of my trip to Cambodia!  The day was focused on getting a big picture view of the situation in Cambodia by meeting with leaders of various organizations working here.  I had aspirations to summarize the many notes I took but now that I go through them there are just too many!  So I will highlight a few things and focus the biggest thing I took away from today.

Many of the leaders commented that the partnerships and networks among the NGOs are the strongest among many cities they have worked in.  The Director of World Hope stated, “There is no room for territorial-ism in this work.  It’s too big.  No agency can do it on their own.”  It’s easy to see from just one day!  We met with representatives from the following organizations:

Chab Dai – An NGO whose goal is to coordinate across all Christian NGOs working in the area of sex trafficking (Hagar is a partner in the Chab Dai coalition).  The Director, Helen Swan, provided an excellent overview of many facts regarding trafficking in Cambodia.  They have an excellent library full of many resources and strive to be a learning organization to provide knowledge to organizations in Cambodia and around the world.  Their primary focus is on awareness and prevention of trafficking.
IJM – We’ve mentioned IJM many times, but they work in the area of legal and social work to handle investigations, provide short term crisis intervention to victims who have been rescued, and advocate for victims throughout the trial process.  They also provide training to local police and judicial officials on the trafficking laws, how to prosecute them and how to treat the victims in order to create lasting structural change.
World Hope – An NGO who provides short term, emergency room aftercare for victims.  Once they have been rescued by law enforcement they are brought to the World Hope shelter for 2-2 1/2 months of assessment to determine whether they can be reintegrated with their family or what the appropriate aftercare services are.  This is where Hagar comes in, as they are one the possible shelters that may be recommended for long term aftercare.

Finally, we also visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum documenting many horrific acts of the Pol Pot regime.  All of that resulted in an extremely overwhelming day!  It would be easy to end in despair after hearing so many of Cambodia’s current problems.  However, in the end I was struck by the hope. Not just what comes from Hagar’s work, but I will, of course, focus on that in later posts. 

One of the leaders today commented that in a sense, Afghanistan is like
Cambodia was 20 years ago.  Twenty years ago the city of Phnom Penh and the entire country was totally destroyed – the infrastructure, families, government and law enforcement.  That means that much of exists today is new and many people are still directly impacted by the genocide.  If Cambodia has come so far in twenty years, just think what is still possible!  So many great organizations are at work here and God is at work here.  Anything is possible!

In the recently published 2010 TIP report – Cambodia was moved up from a Tier 2 Watchlist Country, to a Tier 2 Country.  Tier 2 Watchlist countries are working on the issue but have specific problem areas and could be in danger of falling to Tier 3 status (the lowest ranking). Tier 2 countries are working on the issue, but more can be done.  That change in status means that the Cambodian government is continuing to move in the right direction.

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