What can an individual do when faced by a great evil organized on a global scale? This is the essential question posed by Joy Sumyi Lee in a recent report for the Center for the Study of Democracy on child sex trafficking in Cambodia.
 
            Joy Sumyi Lee is a Toronto teacher and dancer who volunteered to join a Cambodian mission organized by the Ratanak Foundation and its founder, Brian McConaghy, a former RCMP forensic scientist. Ratanak sponsors rehabilitation facilities in Cambodia, training for victims of trafficking and foster care for girls and boys it helps rescue from brothels.
 
            Rahab's House in Svay Pak, a rural slum outside of Phnom Penh the capital of Cambodia, is in the words of Sumyi Lee "a light in a very dark place." Brian McConaghy describes Svay Pak as a "dangerous and hostile criminal business community. It's commodity- the children." Rahab's House was once a notorious brothel. A year ago it was renovated by volunteers from a church in Vancouver to become a place where the community finds medical care and where children go for safety. One small pink "cell" with finger prints still on the walls has been kept as a memorial for a little girl who was raped to death there.
 
            The Canadian team also worked at Daughters Cambodia, a transition life skill center. Young women leave the brothels during their off hours and learn skills such as hair dressing. Sumyi Lee led a dance class that brought some joy into blighted lives. Bob Marley song "No woman, no cry" was the special dance at the end of the day with the children and teachers laughing and holding hands for a brief time before the girls would have to return to their sad duties.
 
            The Center for the Study of Democracy has written many reports on the global evil of human trafficking; statistics roll out from the pages- trafficking is now the third largest grossing center of organized crime after drugs and arms, women and children make up 88% of all victims, 800,000 people are trafficked across borders annually with a third of those victims from South East Asia..
 
            Yet, one can not grasp what the statistics mean until you read a first hand report like Sumyi Lee's. Heartbreaking because she describes a  five year old girl "whose happy innocence is so beautiful" living in a garbage field, or an eleven year old  accepted into foster care, but with her parents resisting because she is too valuable a commodity. Hopeful because in the midst of poverty and depravity Canadian and Cambodian volunteers could still make abused children smile.
 
            "What can we do as a nation, or as an individual?" asks Sumyi Lee, "will there be redemption for all this injustice?" Personal witness, as she has done, is one answer. Supporting organizations like the Ratanak Foundation is another. But there is something we can do as a nation too.
 
            In 2010, Canada will host the G8 summit in Muskoka. Hosts of such summits have the ability to put issues on the agenda. Prime Minister Chretien, for example used his chairmanship at the Kananaskis summit in 2002 to focus the world leaders on African poverty. Prime Minister Harper should use this opportunity to place human trafficking first and foremost on the 2010 agenda. It is a global issue. It is an enormous problem, affecting even more individuals than the 19th century slave trade. But most of all it is about protecting innocent children and vulnerable women. It is, writes Sumyi Lee quoting Mother Teresa, "Doing something beautiful for God."
 
Thomas S. Axworthy is chair of the
Center for the Study of Democracy at Queens University.
The reports of Joy Sumyi Lee can be found at www.queensu.ca/csd/