*EPF406 06/17/2004
Hagar, an NGO, Helps Human Trafficking Victims in Cambodia
(Support includes foster care, therapy, job skills training) (1020)

By Victoria Silverman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Pierre Tami, the founding director of the Hagar shelter for women and children in Cambodia, is among the six heroes whose efforts to combat human trafficking are highlighted in the 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report. Tami stood alongside Secretary of State Colin Powell at the June 14 release of the report, a symbol of the unique contributions nongovernmental organizations are making to the international effort to combat human trafficking.

In 1990, Swiss businessman Tami made his first visit to Cambodia. Deeply affected by the extreme poverty he witnessed and propelled by a religious commitment to assist Phnom Penh's abandoned women and children, Tami and his family moved to Cambodia to launch Hagar, a sheltering effort that has attracted significant U.S. and international support.

Hagar is named for the biblical story of God's assistance to the Egyptian slave Hagar and her son, who had been banished from the home of Abraham. Initially set up to provide care for impoverished "street mothers" and their children, Hagar's resources are increasingly devoted to helping victims of human trafficking gain security within Cambodian society.

"In 1992 we just reached street mothers with their children," Tami explained. "But the situation has changed quite radically. After our first four or five years in Cambodia, the trafficking problem just exploded. Today's street children are all boys. A girl would not last half a day on the street before falling victim to traffickers."

Tami believes the dramatic rise in abductions and coerced sex slavery in Cambodia can be traced to regional efforts to curb prostitution. Trafficking basically grew out of the pressure in neighboring Thailand to change Bangkok's image as a "sex capital," he said. "From Bangkok, organized crime had to find another fertile place to operate."

"Cambodia was just coming out of 30 years of war, with weak legislation and rampant corruption, so organized crime thrived," Tami continued. "Poverty and lack of education, particularly among the countryside, also contributed to the phenomenon." Cambodia is among the poorest and least developed countries of the world, according to the World Bank.

"There are other organizations, like the International Justice Mission (IJM) and the International Organization for Migration, working with the Cambodian government to promote the legislation and legal capacity needed to combat trafficking. Hagar is focused on women who need help. We look after the victims, whether they are victims of domestic violence, rape and other forms of violence. Clearly, however, the number of trafficking victims is rising. Today 33 percent of our beneficiaries have been trafficked," Tami explained.

"Hagar's foster care program, which assists unaccompanied minors, is now filled with girls who have been raped and trafficked into prostitution. The problem is that the age is becoming younger and younger. The national average age for rape is now 12 years of age," Tami said.

To underscore the effect of this violence on children, Tami displayed a disturbingly graphic drawing made by a girl who had been repeated assaulted at age three and left for dead in a Cambodian cemetery. The local police brought the child to Hagar for assistance.

Art therapy, intensive counseling, health care, education and skills training are at the core of Hagar's sheltering efforts. The organization is able to provide residential care and support for 50 mothers and 150 children for six months. In addition, Hagar manages foster home programs and a day training program in Phnom Penh's slums for hundreds of other girls, most of whom have no access to regular education.

In many ways, Hagar's work and Tami's dedication exemplify the extraordinary contributions nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are making around the world to comfort and restore human dignity to trafficking victims and curtail the growth of modern-day slavery.

In its first years of operation, Hagar relied solely on international grants and voluntary assistance to fund and staff its programs. To place the NGO on a long-term, sustainable and secure financial base, Tami encouraged the growth of income-generating schemes whose profits could be ploughed back into Hagar's sheltering efforts. Today Hagar maintains three businesses, including Cambodia's only state-of-the-art soymilk factory.

"The business idea first emerged out of concern for the women. Once a young girl left our program, where were they going to go? There wasn't much of an economy and they were going to continue to be an object of exploitation. So we came up with the idea of launching businesses where we only employ these women," Tami said.

Since Cambodia is an extremely poor country, Tami's goal was to introduce modern technology and the capability to produce a quality product. "We wanted to create a good business, one that met international standards and lifted up the level of what we can do, make money, and achieve this through models of transparency and good governance," he explained.

"I made sure we had businessmen serving on Hagar's board of directors to help us with the strategic planning and ensure [that] we run the businesses as a business," Tami said.

Hagar set up three for-profit ventures, including the soymilk factory, a facility for the production of award-winning accessories, and a catering business for textile industry workers.

Hagar's commercialization has been accomplished in cooperation with the International Finance Cooperation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank. During his visit to Washington, Tami will meet again with World Bank officials to discuss ways of expanding this partnership model to other economies where significant portions of the population are not able to find proper employment.

More information on how nongovernmental organizations like Hagar contribute to international efforts to combat human trafficking is available in the 2003 Trafficking in Persons Report at http://www.state.gov/g/tip/.

Information on Hagar's work in Cambodia is available at http://www.hagarproject.org.

Details on the International Finance Cooperation's effort to promote private-sector investment are available at http://www.ifc.org/. USAID also supports micro-credit enterprises; for more information, see http://www.usaidmicro.org/.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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