Children and young people
Violence and exposure to HIV among sex workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Protecting sex workers from violence and HIV risk in Cambodia
Authors:
C. Jenkins
Publisher:
USA Agency for International Development , 2006
As one of the few countries that have managed to check the spread of HIV, Cambodia is widely praised as a success story. This success is often attributed to the country's 100% condom programme. However, the evidence in this report from USAID reveals that the national HIV/AIDS program has failed to protect the rights of sex workers as women and as citizens. According to the results of this study, conducted among a sample of 1,000 female and transgender sex workers in Phnom Penh, during the period of one year approximately half of those surveyed reported being beaten by police. About a third were gang-raped by police, slightly more than one-third were gang-raped by gangsters and about three-quarters were gang-raped by clients (who are often also gangsters and out-of-uniform police). Most of these rapes occurred at gunpoint or with knives or other weapons. Over 90 percent of the sex workers surveyed in this sample were raped at least once within the year of research.
The author stresses that public health programs that do not protect the human rights of sex workers and others at high risk of acquiring HIV create serious barriers to comprehensive prevention and care. Although new legal instruments protect the rights of infected persons these same persons are very often without any social safety nets, other support mechanisms, or recourse to a rule of law prior to becoming infected. Recommendations are extensive and include institutional rigorous and regular training of police on gender issues, including gender based violence, human rights, and how the law is supposed to uphold these rights for all citizens. In addition the penalization of police and justice system employees who do not follow the laws and obstruct the registration of rape complaints and the persecution of perpetrators is recommended. It is also stressed that donors and NGOs should support the reform of the police and justice system with the aim of ensuring rape, violence, and sexual abuse are properly managed according to the law for all citizens of Cambodia, as declared in the national constitution.
