World Hunger Update: Cambodia

It is shocking to find that in a country of about 13.9 million people, 4.6 million live under $1 a day. Because of this, many children in Cambodia will be trafficked or used for forced labor. 15-year-old student Roeun Ra, said his parents used to make him work by scavenging through garbage: "Many of my friends cannot go to school because their parents ask them to work for money," the boy said. Cambodian Children March Against Child Labour, ABC News, June 12, 2008.




Food inflation hits Cambodia's poor, threatens hunger, Feb 25, 2008
CHRANG CHAMRES, Cambodia (AFP) — On the long, gently sloping bank of Cambodia's Tonle river, Doem Lao chops half a dozen large fish heads in the early morning for the one meal that her family will eat that day. It is the 45-year-old farmer's fourth unseasonably cold dawn in this quiet neighbourhood on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where her extended family has set up camp with others from their village in the southern province of Takeo. Like tens of thousands of rural Cambodians, they have joined the annual migration to the river to buy enough fish to make a year's worth of prahoc, a pungent fermented paste that is the only source of protein for many in the country's impoverished rural regions. But the rice they brought from home has nearly run out and the fish have yet to appear in the large nets strung across the river in front of their camp. The crude bamboo and metal mesh processing stalls on the riverbank are silent -- and February is the last month of the fishing season. A sudden drop-off in the numbers of prahoc fish has seen their price more than triple this year, up to as high as 50 US cents a kilogramme from around 12 cents, putting this most basic of Cambodian commodities out of reach for many.

For poor Cambodians, this means that in addition to losing their traditional staples like prahoc, they are not able to supplement their already meagre diets with other foods, particularly meat. "Everything now is so expensive," said a village woman, Bhum Sap, rattling off the current prices of chicken, pork and beef, which can cost as much as five dollars a kilogramme, a fortune for Cambodia's estimated 4.6 million people struggling to live on less than one dollar a day. For as many as 2.6 million people living in extreme poverty, the situation has been worsening over the last several years, which have been marked by poor harvests brought on by natural disasters such as flood or drought. "Too many Cambodians still suffer from hunger and malnutrition for some or most of the time," the World Food Programme (WFP) said on its website.