Report launch: Wednesday, 11 May 2022 16:00-17:30 ICT (Cambodia/Vietnam) | 11:00-12:30 CEST (Austria) | 10:00-11:30 BST (UK)
The number of women travelling from Cambodia to China for forced or arranged marriages has surged since 2016 and experienced a further spike since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Cambodian women in arranged marriages with Chinese men, whether originally consensual or not, report finding themselves in remote areas and abusive contexts.
China’s one-child policy, in force between 1979 and 2015, reportedly led to sex-selective abortions by families seeking a son instead of a daughter, creating a significant gender imbalance in the country. Driven by Chinese men’s search for a wife, especially in rural areas, thousands of women from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, and Myanmar are transported to China to wed. Although some travel knowing that they are to be married, others are deceived. Many report suffering violence, sex abuse and forced labour.
This event will present different perspectives on bride trafficking to China, with a focus on how the pandemic has shaped these dynamics. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) will share findings from recent research into bride trafficking from Cambodia to China. Chab Dai, a Cambodian civil society organization, and Blue Dragon, a Vietnamese civil society organization that is also a GI-TOC Resilience Fund partner, will share insights from their work with trafficking survivors, focusing on those who have entered into marriages in China.
Panelists
Chair:Lucia Bird, Director, Observatory of Illicit Economies in West Africa, GI-TOC
Opening remarks: Sean Sok Phay, Executive director, Child Helpline Cambodia
Speakers:
Vireak Chhun, Researcher
Thi Hoang, Analyst and JIED managing editor, GI-TOC
Chan Saron, Senior programme manager of survivor restoration, Chab Dai Coalition
Le Thi Hong Luong, Anti-trafficking coordinator, Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation
Cambodia’s trafficked brides: The escalating phenomenon of forced marriage in China - GI-TOC, 2022DOWNLOAD
The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between recruitment fees and other abusive and fraudulent practices of recruitment agencies and trafficking in persons, with a particular focus on criminal justice measures to address this relat...Read More
The new coronavirus (COVID-19) affects almost every area of people’s lives and economic activity and has led to a significant disruption of world trade. The current situation demonstrates how precarious our global systems of production and consump...Read More
Between 1998 and 2008, several hundred North Koreans worked for roughly ten Czech companies. They were mostly young women employed in the shoemaking, textile, and food industries. Initially, their presence attracted little attention from the media o...Read More
This report presents the findings from the Global Business of Forced Labour project.
The project investigates the business models of forced labour in global agricultural supply chains. Over two years the project systematically mapped the business ...Read More