RECOMMENDATIONS  FOR CAMBODIA:
Finalize and implement a nationwide protocol for the proactive

identification of victims among vulnerable groups; increase the availability of services for male victims, especially men exploited in commercial fishing; increase efforts to vigorously investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and convict and punish labor and sex traffickers, individuals who purchase commercial sex acts from children, and complicit officials; issue an executive decree (prakas) or other official guidance authorizing the use of undercover investigative techniques in the enforcement of the anti-trafficking law; establish systematic procedures and allocate resources to assist Cambodian victims through diplomatic missions abroad or in countries without Cambodian diplomatic representation; implement a system for monitoring, collecting, and reporting data on anti-trafficking law enforcement and victim protection efforts; allocate sufficient funding for the implementation of the national action plan to combat trafficking; develop a policy for formally transferring custody of child victims to NGOs; increase efforts to make court processes more sensitive to the needs and interests of victims, including through the provision of witness protection and options for compensation; and continue public awareness campaigns aimed at reducing the demand for commercial sex and child sex tourism, with an increased focus on addressing the local demand.

PROSECUTION
The government lacked comprehensive data on law enforcement efforts, but information collected from various sources suggests modest progress in prosecutions and convictions.The 2008 Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation explicitly addresses trafficking offenses in 12 of its 30 articles. The law prohibits all forms of trafficking and prescribes penalties that are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with other serious crimes, such as rape. Authorities often lacked familiarity with the anti-trafficking law and used provisions of Cambodia’s penal code to prosecute trafficking offenses. The government did not provide comprehensive data on anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts. Authorities reported prosecuting 21 suspected traffickers, but independent sources reported the government prosecuted at least 53 suspects under its anti- trafficking law or comparable provisions in the penal code including 41 for sex trafficking and 12 for labor trafficking. Reports from the government, media, and NGOs indicate the government convicted at least 22 sex traffickers and 7 labor traffickers, an increase from 18 traffickers convicted during the previous year. Convicted traffickers received sentences ranging from two to 15 years’ imprisonment. In April 2014, the government convicted six Taiwanese nationals for the forced labor of hundreds of Cambodian men in the commercial fishing sector; one trafficker is serving her sentence and the others remain at large.
The government continued to design and deliver donor-funded training on the implementation of the anti-trafficking law, reaching more than 2,500 law enforcement and judicial officials. Local organizations and some officials recognized an urgent need for more sophisticated evidence collection techniques, including undercover investigations, to decrease the reliance on witness testimony and adapt to the increasingly clandestine nature of sex trafficking in Cambodia.The government did not issue guidance granting explicit approval of undercover evidence collection in human trafficking cases; in the absence of such guidance, prosecutors denied investigators’ requests, which effectively forced them to close some investigations.An NGO reported that officials rarely pursued prosecutions in cases of cross-border trafficking, despite many victims’ willingness to cooperate with officials.

Endemic corruption at all levels of the Cambodian government severely limited the ability of individual officials to make progress in holding traffickers accountable. Local experts reported one successful case in which authorities prosecuted and convicted six sex traffickers known to have previously received protection from arrest by military police leaders.The government investigated allegations of corruption against one police officer and dismissed him from his position; it did not prosecute or convict any government employees complicit in trafficking nor did it take any punitive measures against Phnom Penh’s 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.

PROTECTION
The government continued to identify victims and refer them to NGOs, but overall victim protection remained inadequate. The government did not finalize guidelines for a standardized, nationwide system for the proactive identification of victims among vulnerable groups; it expanded a pilot program to test draft guidelines in five provinces, but despite more than five years of development, the guidelines were not completed. With assistance from an international organization, the government continued to operate a transit center in Poipet, where it screened for trafficking victims among the approximately 50,000 migrants deported from Thailand in 2014; it identified 336 victims and provided them temporary shelter. The government operated a temporary shelter in Phnom Penh for female victims of trafficking and other crimes, and it referred trafficking victims to NGO shelters—most of which cared for victims of several forms of abuse—but did not provide further assistance. Unlike in previous years, authorities did not provide complete statistics on the number of victims it assisted or referred, and the total number of victims identified or assisted by the government or NGOs is unknown. Local police referred 326 sex trafficking victims to provincial agencies for NGO referrals, an increase from 151 referred in the previous year. Two NGOs provided shelter and services to 222 victims without government support.The government did not develop a policy to transfer custody of child victims to NGOs, leaving organizations that accepted child victims vulnerable to court action against them. Government officials at times returned children to high-risk environments if family members would not consent to temporary guardianship in a shelter. Despite a prevalence of male victims, assistance for this population was limited to ad hoc sheltering in facilities that lacked experience caring for victims.The Cambodian government required foreign victims to be repatriated to their home countries and did not provide legal alternatives to their removal should they face hardship or retribution upon return to their countries of origin; 21 victims were repatriated to Vietnam during the reporting period.
The government did not have adequate procedures in place for assisting victims identified abroad. Diplomatic missions overseas lacked adequate funding or capacity to provide basic assistance or repatriate victims; victims identified in countries without Cambodian diplomatic representation had access to even less support. International and local NGOs assisted in the repatriation of labor trafficking victims from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China, including at least 93 subjected to forced labor on commercial fishing vessels. Cambodian authorities received 436 victims identified and repatriated by the Thai and Vietnamese governments.There were no reports that individuals identified as victims were punished for crimes committed as a result of being