By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
Cambodia’s efforts to stamp out the exploitation of children have been “inadequate and fragmentary,” and leave children vulnerable to a raft of abuses, a United Nations committee has found.
On Jan. 12, Cambodia’s record on preventing the exploitation and abuse was scrutinized over two days by the U.N.’s Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The hearings are part of a regular examination of countries that have ratified the convention on children’s rights, as well as two protocols on children in armed conflict and the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
The hearings for Cambodia placed particular focus on the latter optional protocol.
A document outlining the committee’s concluding observations - dated Feb. 4 - was posted publicly on Thursday.
In it, Cambodia was urged to “intensify efforts” to improve its monitoring and collection of data on cases of child prostitution, prostitution and pornography—indicating that the figures provided are not reflective of the depth and breadth of the problem.
In documents filed to the committee by the Cambodian government, figures showed there had been 86 documented cases of sex with a minor between 2011 and 2013, while 45 children were victims in 24 cases of child pornography during the same period.
The committee is also concerned that the optional protocol has not been disseminated widely enough, “in particular among implementing agencies, parents, teachers, law enforcement personnel, children and the public at large,” it said.
It also pushed for the issues to be made part of the school curricula, arguing that better education helps prevent children from falling victim to such crimes.
“[T]he Committee is concerned that not all offences under the Optional Protocol are adequately covered by training activities, that they have not reached all professionals working with and for children especially in remote and rural areas, and that relevant professionals, in particular the police and those working with the administration of justice, have not received sufficient training on the provisions of the Optional Protocol,” it added.
Cambodia was assessed along with the Dominican Republic, Turkmenistan, Sweden, Mauritius, Gambia, Tanzania, Jamaica, Uruguay, Colombia, Iraq and Switzerland.
