In October 2023, China Labor Watch submitted a Universal Periodic Review of the Kingdom of Cambodia (herein “Cambodia”) to the United Nations in the 46th Session of the UN Universal Periodic Review cycle. This submission highlights China Labor Watch’s concerns regarding human rights violations, trafficking in persons, and labor rights infringements in the country.
Introduction
1. China Labor Watch (CLW) submits the following information regarding Cambodia’s implementation of the recommendations of its third cycle (2017-2022) Universal Periodic Review (UPR). This report focuses on human rights violations, trafficking in persons, and labor rights infringements to a) The Charter of the United Nations; b) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; c) Human rights instruments which States are party to; d) Voluntary pledges and commitments made by States, including those undertaken when presenting their candidatures for election to the Human Rights Council; and e) Applicable international humanitarian laws.
2. CLW commends Cambodia’s normative frameworks that have been developed through, inter alia, the Cambodian Constitution; the Labor Law of 1997; the Criminal Law of 2009; the Law on Minimum Wage of 2018; the Trade Union Law of 2016, and the established anti-trafficking mechanisms within its government bureaucracy such as the National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) and the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Police. After transnational human trafficking in connections with cyber crime operations in Cambodia received global attention in recent years, the Cambodian officials have also taken more anti-trafficking actions such as forming joint law enforcement initiative with China, a key source and destination country of trafficked victims, and drafting a new bill targeting illegal foreigners in the Kingdom. However, more efforts need to be made to fully utilize the legal frameworks and institutional mechanisms to protect human rights and safeguard against transnational crimes in a sustained and effective manner.
3. In addition to its national laws, Cambodia has human rights obligations as a result of the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Forced Labour Convention, (No. 29), the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No. 105), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention.
4. In the third UPR cycle (2017-2022), Cambodia pledged to strengthen and develop legislations that promote the protection of labor and economic and social rights. However, since the last cycle, little evidence suggests that Cambodia has put forth a sufficient legislative and enforcement effort to strengthen these rights.
5. Despite the pledge, systemic patterns of human rights repressions, trafficking in persons, and labor rights violations are evident, with no clear signs of long-term or sustained improvement in any front. Detail as follows.
Human Rights
6. The World Justice Project ranks Cambodia 139th out of 140, among the worst in the world for rule of law. And in 2020, Freedom House characterized the country as “not free.” Following then Prime Minister Hun Sen’s sustained and systematic effort to suppress the political opposition in recent years, the Cambodian government has placed increasing restrictions on civil society, political and social activism, political rights, and free speech. Without separation between the government and the leading party, Cambodia’s rule of law has faced an escalating threat. Law enforcement, legislative, and judicial bodies of the government have become tools to maintain the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)’s power, while arbitrary imposition of state power, pretrial detention, harassment and threats of violence, and unlawful death and injuries severely undermined civil society. A 2017 example shows the Cambodia Supreme Court ruling to dissolve the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), Hun Sen’s opposition party, for “conspiring with the United States to overthrow the government,” further solidifying the rule of the CPP.
7. In recent years, the Cambodian government has used tactics such as lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, imposition of tax bills, and violence against free press. Reporters Without Borders ranked Cambodia 144th out of 180 countries in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index, down from 132nd in 2017. The crackdown has effectively disarmed the media as a civil society accountability mechanism, worsening various forms of human rights abuse.
8. Civil society organizations continued to be subjected to the authorities’ harassment and intimidation, especially after the controversial passage of the Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations of 2015. Some Cambodia-based NGOs have since been forced to shut down.
9. According to the ICCPR, ICRMW, and the Cambodian Constitution, all citizens shall have the right to freedom of press and freedom of association. Article 31 of the Constitution states that Cambodia recognizes and respects international human rights standards and conventions. Yet these fundamental rights are systematically repressed by the authorities.
Trafficking in Persons
10. The U.S. Department of State’s 2023 Trafficking in Persons report classified Cambodia as Tier 3, or not fully meeting the minimum standards in the UN TIP Protocol and the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).
11. In the last cycle, the issue of human trafficking in Cambodia was highlighted. JS8 stated that Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for children victims of trafficking. Trafficking for sexual exploitation, accordingly, occurred primarily between Cambodia and its neighboring nations, where children are exploited by various service providers including brothels, beer gardens, massage parlors, karaoke bars, and other venues.
12. Despite troubling reports on human trafficking in the recent decade published by various news and civil society sources, Cambodia’s existing legal framework offers legal basis against trafficking in persons. Article 46 of the Cambodian Constitution prohibits human trafficking, especially against women. The 1997 Labor Law criminalizes sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Labor trafficking offenses could be prosecuted under Article 15 and 16, which prohibits “forced or compulsory labor.” The Criminal Code also prohibits subjecting persons under “working conditions incompatible with human dignity.” The Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sex Exploitation of 2008, which applies to “any offense committed in the territory of the Kingdom of Cambodia,” stipulates forced labor, or the buying, selling, or exchanging, and the transportation of persons, to be crimes punishable by imprisonment. Additionally, the Cambodian government has also established an anti-trafficking task force in 2022. Despite these legislations and efforts, anti-trafficking enforcement remains uneven and ineffective against the long-established trafficking criminal network embedded in Cambodia, while measurements, monitoring, and reporting on trafficking within Cambodia is lacking.
13. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as Chinese investment receded, cyber scam and human trafficking operations began to thrive in regions such as Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, taking advantage of young people seeking employment. Trafficking victims were often brought into the operations through false and deceptive job offerings. Scam operations include quota-based fraudulent sales; illegal online gambling and investment schemes; and romance scams. They often force the victims to work up to 10-15 hours a day. In some cases, victims can be “resold” to other scam operations if they do not agree to fraudulently recruit additional members, or if they do not meet impossibly high revenue quotas. Some victims CLW directly connected with reported repeated coercion and threats, imposed arbitrary debts, extreme violence, disappearances, and deaths that loomed over their will to fight. Some have taken extreme measures, such as jumping off of multi-story buildings, in an attempt to escape.
14. According to CLW’s correspondence with trafficking victims and local partners, scam operations rent buildings and compounds in cities such as Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh to engage in transnational cyber scamming and trafficking activities. Trafficking activities function to supply scam operations with a consistent “workforce,” with trafficking tactics such as deception, restriction of movement, intimidation, violence, and debt entrapment serve to keep victims at bay. In this criminal complex, Cambodian landlords and landowners perpetuate and actively profit out of the scam operations renting and operating in their spaces. Some property owners reportedly used their political connections and influence to shield scam operations and their tenants from local and national law enforcements. As such, to achieve sustained improvement, Cambodian property owners who foster and profit out of transnational criminal operations under their roofs must be held accountable.
15. Some enforcement actions have been carried out. From 2021 to date, the Cambodian officials have taken measures combating human trafficking following global backlash. Joint enforcement efforts against transnational gambling and scam operations have also led to a reduction in trafficking activities. For example, in 2019, the Chinese and Cambodian law enforcement established a joint enforcement office in Phnom Penh, and has engaged in multiple joint enforcement actions since. The office continues to operate today. CLW’s investigation in 2023 also revealed that the officials’ crackdown has led to positive effects. Some Chinese trafficking victims reported to CLW that these measures have led to successful rescues. Yet some reflected that after the Cambodian official rescued the victims from their captors, they were then transported to and detained by the Cambodian immigration offices with no proper cause or valid documentation. Some reported petty fees incurred from almost all aspects of their lives for the duration of their detainment. Moreover, following crackdowns, many scam syndicates have since ceased their operations in Cambodia, especially in Phnom Penh, and relocated to nearby Southeast Asian countries, the middle-east, and Africa. However, as the key perpetrators in these transnational criminal networks have yet to be apprehended by any State officials, the root of the problem has not been eradicated. Long-term impact of the law enforcement actions remains to be seen.
16. Based on correspondence with the victims, we also noted the existence of sex trafficking of mainland Chinese women in service industries (such as massage parlors) that service Chinese businessmen. According to women’s testimonies, most of them had been sex workers in mainland China, and were brought to Cambodia to engage in sex work under voluntary terms. Some noted that local officials’ crackdowns and public shaming against sex workers back home pushed them abroad. In Cambodia, these women’s captors take advantage of their unfamiliarity with the social conditions abroad and instigate fear among them through hyperbolic claims of terrorist attacks and crimes in Cambodia. Additionally, they also restrict women’s movement. The restriction is especially evident against young women.
Labor Rights
17. According to the ICESCR and national laws, workers in Cambodia have the right to: the opportunity to earn a living through work which can be freely chosen or accepted, remuneration including for public holidays, safe and healthy working conditions, equal opportunity, and rest, leisure and reasonable limitations of working hours. Workers also have the right to form and join the trade union of their choice and to take part in meetings and activities of trade unions and of any other associations established in accordance with law, and advocate for their rights. However, the Cambodian government has, in recent years, exerted concerted effort in repressing the above-mentioned fundamental labor rights.
18. In the last UPR cycle, the Clean Clothes Campaign expressed concern about crackdowns on the right to join and establish trade unions without interference and the right to carry out trade union activities. It stressed that in the past few years, the Government of Cambodia has acted repeatedly to limit the activities of certain unions, curtail their general operations, and prosecute key trade union organizers and activists.
19. Similar patterns of labor repression persisted and only intensified since the last cycle. According to Cambodian national laws, it is workers’ rights to assemble and unionize. Yet since the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Cambodian government has exhibited a worrying pattern of intensifying repression of the independent labor movement, along with political opposition, the media, and all forms of civil society activism. Employers’ large-scale retaliative layoffs of unionized workers is permitted, while peaceful labor strikes and demonstrations were met with the officials’ violent repression.
20. The Labor Law of 1997 grants workers the constitutionally protected rights to freedom of association and the associated rights including the right to collective bargaining. However, independent unions are repressed through legislative, judiciary, and enforcement means, undermining this constitutional right. All of these practices are in blatant violation of Cambodia’s dueful human rights obligations under its national laws and its signage and ratification of international conventions. For example, unions affiliated with the CPP were offered more power through policy means including “Most Representative Status” (MRS). MRS is a union registration requirement under Articles 54 and 55 of Trade Union Law, requiring unions to reach support from 30 percent of workers at the workplace before they become eligible for registration. Independent trade unions can hardly reach this threshold to be registered. Independent unionists also face arrests and wrongful convictions.
21. Cambodia has still yet to establish designated labor courts, although Cambodian labor law expressly requires them. As a result, the Arbitration Council is the only labor-specific alternative dispute settlement body.
Recommendations
- Enhance rule of law through strengthening judiciary independence and establishing independent national accountability mechanisms to monitor judicial, legislative, and law enforcement bodies’ actions in accordance with national and international standards.
- The authority should cease its repressive measures targeting civil society, and allow for third-party monitoring mechanisms independent of governmental organizations–such as NGOs, civil society organizations, and other interest groups–to examine, control, and monitor labor rights abuse. Specifically, Cambodia should allow UN Special Procedures to make entrance and conduct human and labor rights review periodically.
- Sign and ratify the following: the ILO C97 Migration for Employment Convention, ILO C143 Migrant Workers Convention, the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, UNTOC, with a specific focus of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking, ICESCR, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
- Fully implement the following: the Forced Labor Convention; ICCPR; ICESCR; Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention; Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention; Abolition of Forced Labour Convention.
- Fully implement national laws including the Constitution of the Kingdom Cambodia, the 1997 Labor Law, Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, and establish impartial and independent accountability mechanisms within Cambodia’s government bureaucracy to monitor the implementation of said laws.
- Establish an independent labor court, per Labor Law of the Kingdom of Cambodia §387; ensure the independence of arbitration councils when processing labor disputes.
- Remove administrative barriers, ensure that workers can freely and independently register trade unions under an independent, swift process; classify all disputes involving trade unions as collective labor disputes as opposed to individual labor disputes.
- Establish an independent complaints mechanism with the authority to investigate all reported allegations of and complaints about acts of torture and ill-treatment.
- The Cambodian authorities should better coordinate its efforts to combat trafficking in persons, especially through readily available mechanisms such as the National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) and the Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Police, by systematically and vigorously investigating and prosecuting perpetrators. Ensure the anti-trafficking task force conducts unbiased, fair, swift, and independent investigations and rescue on the issue of forced labor and labor trafficking. In addition, authorities should guarantee adequate protection, reparation, and compensation to victims, including rehabilitation.
- Increase the transparency of government efforts to combat trafficking and provide disaggregated data on investigations and prosecutions, victim identification, and service provision, including by continuing to share relevant data with international partners.
- Take legal and other enforcement actions against companies, groups, and individual offenders who violate anti-forced labor and anti-trafficking laws and allow, perpetuate, support, facilitate, or participate in trafficking in persons and forced labor; provide support for victims and survivors who were trafficked to foreign countries.
- Coordinate with other countries’ authorities–such as China–to provide repatriation to survivors and free and affordable short-term shelter and services.
