Climate Change, Forced Migration and Trafficking in Persons: Risk of Young Women in Rural Cambodia

Cambodia, a low-income country in the Mekong Delta region, potentially faces devastating impacts of climate change and associated natural and manmade disasters. Although anti-trafficking efforts in Cambodia have improved substantially, Cambodia remains a country of source, transit, and destination of trafficking in persons (TIP). Utilizing our preliminary research on young women in rural Cambodia as a case study, we discuss available, though fragmented, suggestive evidence to link climate change/disaster crisis and forced migration to TIP increases. Based on our and others’ conceptual models, we further suggest that evidence-based anti-TIP mitigation measures in climate-impacted areas need to be culturally and migration-stage-specific to be successful.