Inhumane Poverty and Single Mothers

Inhumane Poverty

Many Vietnamese refugees live along the river in Phnom Phen, Cambodia. They cannot return to Vietnam and are unwanted in Cambodia. The people have no other choices but to exist next to this river in inhumane poverty. I have been in this village and have seen that typical living conditions force them to do their laundry, prepare their food, wash their dishes, fish, play, urinate and defecate in the same river on which they live.

Thus, one primary reason for the trafficking of children in the sex trade is economic in nature. People in Thailand live on the equivalent of $300.00 U.S. dollars a month. Cambodians live on the equivalent of $25.00 U.S. dollars a month. The pictures below show us the poverty that exists in these countries.

Single Mothers

Another issue that complicates this general poverty is many husbands there abandon their wives and children, just as they do elsewhere in the world. The difference is that in this part of the world, there are little or no organized social services to help the abandoned families. Many women must then choose between two tragic options. The first option is to watch their children starve to death. The second option is to sell one of their children to a brothel for the equivalent of one to two years income in an attempt to save the other children in the family.

While these families typically live on $300.00 per year, a child in the sex trade industry can earn $3,000.00 a year for her family. This is roughly equivalent to a typical United States teenager that earns $300.00 per month for spending money being offered $20,000.00 per month for her family if she would "work" in the sex trade. How would families in the United States deal with such a temptation? Girls as young as four years old are being found in the brothels.