Cambodia

People

Cambodia is an origin, transit and destination country for human trafficking. The country is a destination market for victims from Vietnam, and a transit point for victims trafficked to Thailand. Women and girls are the primary victim group, trafficked for prostitution, while men are sent into forced labour. Cambodia is a key destination for the sexual exploitation of children, especially in the tourism industry. As poverty is rife, most victims of trafficking are lured by false job opportunities and tied into debt bondage. Trafficking operations are run mainly by Cambodian nationals with the help of corrupt officials.

Cambodia is predominantly a source country of migrant smuggling throughout the region, most commonly into Thailand, where wages are higher and the cost of smuggling is much cheaper than using legal channels. Cambodia’s weak economy and lack of regular work increases the demand for smuggling services, which are facilitated by weak border control mechanisms. Smuggling is run by loose and decentralized criminal groups, and facilitated by corrupt law enforcement, immigration and government officials. Smuggling groups have been successful in evolving their practices to avoid the legal frameworks that have been put in place to prevent irregular migration.

Trade

Historically a significant source country for weapons, Cambodia has evolved into a transit country for arms smuggling, primarily into Myanmar. Though international intervention has diminished the national stockpile of weapons, a significant number of arms are still being recovered within the country, with government corruption putting state-held weapons at risk of being trafficked. A small domestic market also exists, with social media being used to advertise and sell illicit arms to citizens.

Environment

Cambodia’s forests are home to precious resources and medicinal plants that create a large market for flora crimes, especially in the form of illegal logging and timber. Up to 70% of Cambodia’s timber products comprise rare and illegal species. The illegal flora trade is conducted in parallel with legal business, with the mixing of illicit and licit wood during its transportation being the most common method of concealing illegally procured timber. The illicit flora market provides lucrative income for low-paid foresters and farmers, and has a particularly close involvement with the ruling elite. The impact has been severe on Cambodian forests, which have declined significantly in the last two decades.

Cambodia has a large illegal wildlife market and is a source country for many rare species. Combined with increasing consumer demand and weak law enforcement, this has created a diversified and well-consolidated market. Transnational organized crime groups are involved in fauna crimes throughout the region and benefit from Cambodia’s porous borders. The market is driven primarily by local demand for wild meat and wildlife ingredients used in traditional medicines. Cambodia’s fisheries were blacklisted by the EU in 2014 for illegal and unregulated fishing, and many illegal trawlers are protected by powerful criminals with political connections. Cambodia’s criminal market for non-renewable resources consists mainly of sand mining and the extraction of minerals such as gold. According to the UN, Cambodia has been significantly under-reporting the amount of sand it exports to Singapore, in particular. The facilitators and beneficiaries of non-renewable crimes are thought to be members of the ruling elite.

Drugs

Cambodia’s synthetic drug market is well consolidated and continuously expanding due to the country’s proximity to the Golden Triangle, its porous borders and corrupt and underdeveloped law enforcement structures. Cambodia is an important transit country for synthetic drugs, which are smuggled through its north-eastern borders and then trafficked into the wider region and beyond. Due to the falling prices of methamphetamine and ecstasy, the number of synthetic drug users is increasing, and larger seizures are made by Cambodia's law enforcement agencies every year. As with most forms of organized crime in the country, corrupt officials facilitate the criminal market in Cambodia. Cannabis is widely used and culturally accepted in Cambodia, and its cultivation is widespread in rural areas, which supply the domestic and regional market. Among the arrests made in 2019, the majority of traffickers were foreign nationals.

Cambodia is both a destination and transit country for heroin trafficking, with the cities of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh acting as the largest transit points into neighbouring countries. However, Cambodia is not a significant player in the illicit heroin trade compared with its neighbours in the region, and the trade is run mainly by international criminal groups. Only a small number of seizures have been made, and most of the demand for heroin seems to have migrated to the synthetic drug market.

Cambodia serves as a transit country for cocaine trafficking. While seizures are usually small, they increased in 2020. Nevertheless, the value of the market in Cambodia remains much lower than in neighbouring countries.

Cyber Crimes

*This indicator was first included in the 2023 iteration of the tool

Financial Crimes

*This indicator was first included in the 2023 iteration of the tool

Criminal Actors

Despite a few small gangs with hierarchical structures, there do not appear to be any significant mafia-style groups operating within Cambodia. While small, loose criminal networks exist in the country, they are not prominent and operate mainly in the human trafficking and smuggling markets. Most markets are run by international criminal groups, with varying levels of involvement from the Cambodian government and law enforcement. Organized crime is run mostly by international groups colluding with local Cambodian criminals.

The majority of Cambodia’s criminal markets are also run by foreign criminal groups, with Chinese groups dominating human and drug trafficking. Taiwanese groups are also involved in drug markets, as are groups from Myanmar. Many Chinese organized crime groups use Phnom Penh as a safe haven and invest heavily in legitimate businesses in the country. These international groups are usually connected with and protected by the ruling elite in Cambodia.

State-embedded actors are most heavily involved in the illegal logging industry, with Prime Minister Hun Sen and his supporters reportedly running the country’s most powerful logging syndicate. The ruling elite is also accused of allocating rights to oil and mineral resources without due process. Political figures at the highest levels of government, as well as law enforcement officials, appear to provide protection to criminal markets as a means to enrich themselves, with the prime minister and his allies reportedly stashing millions abroad.

Leadership and governance

While the Cambodian political system has not been captured by organized crime, corruption is rampant and widespread, with little accountability or transparency, allowing many figures in the ruling elite to acquire wealth from criminal markets. Public trust in government institutions is low, while calls for more accountability in the public sector have not been met with commitments from government. Cambodia has enhanced its cooperation with its international partners by joining regional initiatives to combat drug and arms trafficking and signing UN conventions against its most prolific criminal markets. However, Cambodia diverges from the UN Model Treaty on Extradition and its penal code remains silent on a number of human rights issues. In spite of being a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations, which was established to promote intergovernmental and cross-border cooperation, Cambodia remains hostile towards Thai and Vietnamese policing agencies, and border liaison still appears to grant protection to favoured organized crime groups.

While Cambodia has legislation in place to combat most forms of organized crime, sufficient enforcement is lacking. Legislative processes are slow, as can be seen with the Arms Trade Treaty being implemented years after it was signed and the fact that arms brokers and intermediaries remain unregulated. In the flora and fauna criminal markets, the penalties are considered insufficient to act as deterrents and national laws do not adequately implement the regulations set up by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Corrupt practices in government and law enforcement also act to undermine any national legislation aimed at preventing organized crime.

Criminal justice and security

While Cambodia’s Constitution guarantees an independent judiciary, the rule of law in Cambodia is extremely fragile. The criminal investigation system is ineffective and corrupt and enforcement is rudimentary, with more emphasis placed on petty crime than on high-level organized crime. Political intervention also occurs in the judicial system, with the ruling party approving appointments to judicial offices. The prison system is underfunded, and overcrowding has ballooned since the government launched an anti-drug initiative in 2017. In May 2020, the government announced plans to reform the criminal justice system to reduce the backlog in cases and prison overcrowding, which is largely due to the number of detainees being held in pre-trial detention facilities.

Enhancing border security is a top priority for the government. Since 2018, Cambodia’s armed forces have attempted to crack down on smuggling and trafficking across its borders. However, despite these increased efforts, border control forces are poorly resourced and have insufficient specialized knowledge and a limited budget. Cambodia therefore has porous borders that are vulnerable to the trafficking of several illicit commodities. Its border with Thailand is particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and smuggling. Each year, thousands of Cambodians illegally cross the border into Thailand, where they use false documentation and permits to secure work. Corruption is present at the border, with some Chinese groups appearing to have privileged access in and out of the country.

There is no clear distinction of roles for Cambodia's law enforcement agencies, and in many rural areas the Cambodian national police are severely under-resourced and dependent on user-pay models. Patron-client networks are rife at the highest levels of law enforcement, and recruitment processes are also open to patronage, which has led to a widespread lack of trust in the police and a low reporting rate of criminal victimization.

Economic and financial environment

Cambodia is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and is currently subject to increased monitoring as a result of numerous strategic deficiencies in its anti-money laundering framework. Improvements have been made in complying with international standards regarding the criminalizing of money laundering, as well as to due diligence processes and the reporting of suspicious transactions. However, the use of financial intelligence in investigating money laundering and terrorist financing is poor, and despite appearing responsive to international cooperation, Cambodia’s implementation of international agreements has been lacking.

Cambodia is one of the countries in South-eastern Asia most open to foreign investment, allowing foreign investment and ownership in most industries. It has also implemented notable reforms to make the trade regime more open and transparent. However, due to corruption, the perpetration of property offences and an inefficient bureaucracy, Cambodia remains a very difficult place to do business.

Civil society and social protection

While domestic law legislates for the protection of witnesses and whistle-blowers, the measures are insufficient and ineffective in practice. Whistle-blowers face significant risks, and defamation provisions in Cambodia’s penal code limit the number of willing witnesses. The government’s response to human trafficking victims falls well short of international standards. In regard to organized crime prevention measures, community policing initiatives have been encouraged by Cambodia’s international partners, but implementation has been minimal and the government has no strategy for a community response to organized crime. While there are sporadic community-style policing efforts in some of the rural areas, these are undermined by poorly resourced and corrupt local policing services.

In 2018 the Cambodian government took measures to shrink even further the country’s already-small civic space. Civil society organizations face ongoing intimidation and threats by the government, whose cooperation with them is very limited, but some progress has been made in recent years with regard to protecting the victims of child exploitation.

Cambodia’s media is heavily censored. The media environment is hostile, with 30 radio stations and the Cambodian Daily newspaper being closed without explanation by the government before the last election; Cambodians now only have access to news from media outlets that are linked to Prime Minister Hun Sen. Critical journalists are regularly imprisoned, and labour unions are kept under surveillance as well as subjected to intimidation and violence.