PROTECTION
The government made minimal efforts to protect child trafficking victims. The government did not identify or provide care to any trafficking victims during the reporting period, which is a decrease compared with the 17 victims identified during the previous reporting period. There are no shelters or services available specifically for trafficking victims. However, the government operated two shelters, which provided temporary care for child victims of sexual abuse, violence, and abandonment, and maintained five protection and social reinsertion centers, which provided access to reintegration services for children experiencing long- term trauma.The government also continued to operate six day centers through its Nos Kaza project, which aims to reduce the vulnerability of street children to forced labor and sexual abuse, including prostitution.
Border police have written procedures to guide officers in proactive identification of trafficking victims; however, these procedures were not fully implemented during the reporting period.The government did not have a formal referral mechanism for trafficking victims in place. However, the Cabo Verdean Institute for Children and Adolescents continued to operate a national network to prevent and provide assistance to victims of child sexual abuse, which coordinated their referral to care and offered support throughout court processes. The government continued to operate a hotline for reporting cases of child abuse, including sexual exploitation and child labor; however, it is unclear whether any cases of

trafficking were reported. Cabo Verdean law does not provide for legal alternatives to the removal of foreign trafficking victims to countries where they may face hardship or retribution.There were no reports officials penalized trafficking victims for unlawful acts committed as a result of being subjected to trafficking.

PREVENTION
The government sustained modest efforts to prevent trafficking. There was no government entity specifically mandated to coordinate efforts to combat trafficking and no national action plan. In July 2014, however, the government created a national committee dedicated to preventing the sexual exploitation of children; the committee met four times during the reporting period. The government also continued to operate a national committee dedicated to the prevention and elimination of child labor, which also met four times during the reporting period.The government, however, did not identify any forced child labor cases, and labor inspectors were not mandated to conduct inspections in informal sectors, where the majority of forced labor in Cabo Verde occurs. The government did not conduct any national awareness campaigns during the reporting period. In July 2014, the government adopted a code of ethics for the tourism sector in an effort to combat the sexual exploitation of children. The government did not make any tangible efforts to reduce the demand for forced labor during the reporting period.The government did not provide anti-trafficking training or guidance for its diplomatic personnel.

CAMBODIA:  Tier 2 Watch List
Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Cambodian adults and children migrate to other countries within the region and, increasingly, the Middle East for work; many are subjected to sex trafficking or forced labor on fishing vessels, in agriculture, construction, factories, or domestic servitude. Children from impoverished families are highly vulnerable to forced labor, often with the complicity of their families, including in domestic servitude and forced begging in Thailand and Vietnam. Male Cambodians are increasingly recruited in Thailand for work on fishing boats and subsequently subjected to forced labor on Thai-owned vessels in international waters. Cambodian victims escaping this form of exploitation have been identified in Malaysia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Fiji, Senegal, and South Africa. Cambodian men report severe abuses byThai captains, deceptive recruitment, underpaid wages, and being forced to remain aboard vessels for years. NGOs report women from rural areas are recruited under false pretenses to travel to China to enter into marriages with Chinese men; some are subsequently subjected to forced factory labor or forced prostitution.
All of Cambodia’s provinces are a source for human trafficking. Sex trafficking is largely clandestine; Cambodian and ethnicVietnamese women and girls move from rural areas to cities and tourist destinations, where they are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels, beer gardens, massage parlors, salons, karaoke bars, and non- commercial sites. An NGO report released in 2013 examined the prevalence of children among individuals in the sex trade in commercial sex establishments in three cities and found that children comprised 8.2 percent of this population. The study concludes this represents a significant decline in this form of child sex trafficking since earlier reports by different entities published

in 1997 and 2000.The same NGO reported that a March 2015 assessment found the prevalence of children among this population declined to 2.2 percent; these results had not yet been published at the close of the reporting period. Cambodian men form the largest source of demand for child prostitution; however, men from other Asian countries, the United States, Australia, South Africa, and Europe travel to Cambodia to engage in child sex tourism. Vietnamese women and children, many of whom are victims of debt bondage, travel to Cambodia and are subjected to sex trafficking. The Svay Pak area outside Phnom Penh, once known as an epicenter of Cambodia’s child sex trade, is now sometimes a transit point for sex trafficking victims from Vietnam who are exploited in hotels and other establishments in Phnom Penh. NGOs report some Vietnamese victims are transported through Cambodia by criminal gangs before being exploited in Thailand and Malaysia. Traffickers are most commonly family or community members or small networks of independent brokers. Corrupt officials in Cambodia,Thailand, and Malaysia cooperate with labor brokers to facilitate the transport of victims across the border. Local observers report corrupt officials often thwart progress in cases where the perpetrators are believed to have political, criminal, or economic ties to government officials.
The Government of Cambodia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Despite these measures, the government did not demonstrate overall increasing anti-trafficking efforts compared to the previous reporting period; therefore, Cambodia is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for a third consecutive year. Cambodia was granted a waiver from an otherwise required downgrade to Tier 3 because its government has a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is devoting sufficient resources to implement that plan.The government continued to prosecute and convict traffickers, including one case involving the forced labor of Cambodian men on commercial fishing vessels. The government did not prosecute or convict any complicit officials and did not take disciplinary action against a former anti-trafficking police chief, whose 2011 conviction for human trafficking was overturned in an unannounced, closed-door Supreme Court hearing during the previous reporting period. Local authorities identified and referred 326 domestic sex trafficking victims to NGOs. Despite an increased prevalence of male victims and Cambodian victims exploited abroad, the government did not make progress in providing protection to these groups.The government adopted a new national action plan for combating trafficking. However, it neither finalized draft guidelines for victim identification nor issued formal guidance allowing the use of undercover investigation techniques in trafficking investigations—both of which have been pending initiatives for several years.