Sreyheng*, 26, now lives with her mother and stepfather in rural Kratie province, raising an infant daughter from a marriage she never chose.
Promised a good job in China, she instead spent eight years trapped in two forced marriages. She escaped only after a Cambodian rights group intervened.
That support, though, is vanishing. Early this year, U.S. aid to groups helping victims like her was cut under the second Trump administration’s sweeping rollback of international development funds.
A year ago, Sreyheng called Adhoc’s anti-trafficking helpline after filing a complaint with Cambodian police. The organization, Cambodia’s oldest human rights group, previously relied on U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding for more than half its operations.
“I didn’t have enough rice to eat – only noodles – and I stayed in a bedroom most of the time, watching TV and playing on the phone,” she said of her final months in her second forced marriage in Nanyang, China, where she had three children before escaping. For nearly three years, Sreyheng said she was only allowed to go outside if accompanied by her husband.
Her ordeal began at 18, when a Cambodian broker promised her steady work in China. Instead, she was sold into a five-year servile relationship that produced two children – the start of a cycle of exploitation that would last nearly a decade.
But as Sreyheng tries to get back on her feet, continued support from organizations like Adhoc is no longer viable after budget cuts. More than eight other Cambodian NGOs with anti-trafficking programs are in the same position, with project managers saying hundreds – potentially thousands – of victims, mostly exploited migrant workers and sex trafficking victims, will now go unrescued and unsupported each year, as the state often relies on these groups to manage caseloads.
At the same time, Cambodia’s role as a hub for the scam industry, which traffics an estimated 150,000 people, has continued to expand despite periodic government crackdowns that experts call largely symbolic. NGOs received little support to free victims from compounds – efforts that have now collapsed.
“Due to the funding cuts, we are no longer able to support some victims who were cheated or trafficked by organized crime groups,” said Adhoc President Ny Sokha. “Many are still suffering abroad.”
Nearly $5 million had been committed to Adhoc by USAID over five years, starting in 2024, with a significant portion earmarked for anti-trafficking operations. The group received only half of the funding before the contract was canceled.
After USAID was dismantled and absorbed by the U.S. State Department in March under the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts, 83% of its programs were cancelled, including 30 in Cambodia and $260 million that had funded crucial initiatives against human trafficking, as well as programs in health, education, civil society and human rights.
Cambodia has long ranked at the bottom of the annual U.S. human trafficking report, and has been placed in Tier 3 for the past three years due to a sharp rise in cases linked to online scam networks, which many analysts say operate with government complicity.
Sokha said Adhoc has maintained a hotline for Cambodian workers abroad, coordinated emergency rescues and employed counselors to provide trauma therapy and legal guidance – often serving as the only lifeline for victims without family support and assisting with reintegration.
Sreyheng said she received counseling and livelihood support from Adhoc earlier this year, but those services are no longer available.
Sokha is disheartened at no longer being able to routinely help victims but vowed that the organization will continue to do everything it can while lobbying for new donors. Before the cuts, the group averaged 100 trafficking victim rescues and repatriations a year.
Several other local NGOs that relied on U.S. aid for counter trafficking in persons told CamboJA News they have faced similar downsizing.
Moeun Tola, executive director of the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (Central), said the suspension of legacy USAID contracts forced the group to scale back outreach from 10 nationwide locations to just two, slashing grassroots anti-trafficking campaigns across eight provinces.
The organization had heavily depended on a nearly $1 million USAID contract covering five operational years. Before the contract was terminated in March, it had taken on 75 cases of Cambodian migrant workers suspected of enduring exploitative and forced labor this year, according to figures Central shared with CamboJA News. They have had to discontinue their assistance.
Tola, who also warned of the broader impact of foreign aid withdrawal on civil society in the country, said the exploitation of young Cambodian women by high-risk labor recruitment services remains endemic. He cited a recent case in which 100 exploited women and girls were repatriated from China earlier this year.
Without the support of NGOs and rights groups, he said, these exploitative networks are likely to deepen.
In addition to coordinating repatriation for trafficked migrant workers, Central has provided legal services to Cambodians defrauded out of thousands of dollars in labor brokerage scams.
Phanith* lost more than $4,000 after being defrauded by a man claiming to be a talent recruiter for a South Korean manufacturing company, who promised to secure a job and arrange visas and travel for a fee.
He and 40 others with similar cases had been working with Central to file complaints and pursue lawsuits, but they were left in limbo after the group was forced to shutter its office dedicated to handling the caseload.
Chab Dai Coalition, an international NGO in Phnom Penh focused on ending modern slavery, said it had to lay off eight staff, reduce operational capacity and transfer most of its 37 active victim support cases to the government following the funding cuts.
The group’s director, Hor Kosal, warned that the funding cuts are limiting survivors’ access to legal aid, counseling, food and healthcare, and said government resources are insufficient to meet demand.
Much of the funding that NGOs like Central, Adhoc and Chab Dai relied on for combating modern slavery came through USAID’s longstanding Counter Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) project, which has pumped tens of millions of dollars into intergovernmental efforts since 2006 to tackle human trafficking and provide support to victims – placing it at the center of the Cambodia’s anti-trafficking response.
But with online scam syndicates entrenched in more than 350 compounds across Cambodia and exploiting an estimated 150,000 people from 22 countries to generate at least $12 billion in illicit revenue a year, according to Winrock International, the former CTIP implementer, tackling the epicenter of human trafficking in the country now hinges on confronting these criminal networks.
Mark Taylor, Winrock’s former chief of party, told The Diplomat in May that CTIP partners rescued and repatriated more than 200 people, mostly foreign nationals, from forced criminality in scam centers before the project was shut down.
While the government launched a nationwide crackdown on scam centers last month, the effort appears to have slowed. Officials said operations would continue, but attention shifted to a border conflict with Thailand, while major alleged scam sites and elites reported to be linked to them were left untouched.
Screening for trafficking among the thousands of foreign nationals detained in the raids appeared limited.
Choun Bun Eng, permanent vice chair of the National Committee to Counter Trafficking, told CamboJA News at the time that initial checks mostly uncovered “immigration and labor law violations.” She called for “shared responsibility” with the detainees’ home countries.
Asked recently about the suspension of U.S. aid, she said the cuts would not affect the government’s ability to combat and prevent human trafficking.
“In the past, their [U.S.] assistance supported certain activities, particularly where people did not always cooperate directly with the government. We still value that support as both direct and indirect collaboration,” she said, referring to prevention work such as public education, outreach and training for frontline officials.
“We remain committed to implementing our strategic plan,” she said, claiming cases were down and progress had been made this year, citing government data she did not provide.
Despite the claims of progress, non-government support channels are ultimately struggling to stay afloat in all their advocacy operations.
For more than five months since their anchor funder pulled out, Cambodia’s NGOs and human rights groups have struggled to secure new donors. With operations under strain, the country’s fragile system for assisting trafficking survivors and preventing new cases faces growing uncertainty.
*Asterisks indicate names where the family name has been withheld for privacy and sensitivity.
