The Problem

Despite extensive national and international efforts combating trafficking, Thailand remains a destination for child migrants, many of who enter the child sex tourism industry.[1] Pattaya in particular has developed an international reputation for child sex tourism. Anti-trafficking researchers targeting street children estimate that Pattaya hosts about 1,500 to 2,000 homeless and impoverished children per year, while numbers are increasing. Children search for work, migrating – alone or with their families – from Thailand’s northeast provinces, Cambodia, Burma, Laos and Vietnam.

The majority of street children have been trafficked, endured crimes of pedophilia or other physical and emotional abuse. Older children remain particularly vulnerable to the sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS, and other forms of physical and sexual abuse. Children in Pattaya’s seventeen slums are also at risk of sexual abuse and trafficking: foreign pedophiles often ‘groom’ poor families, gaining their trust to have unsupervised access to the children.

While there are efforts addressing vulnerable populations including orphaned children, street children, and sex workers in Pattaya, the CPDC is the only organization helping street living children with protection, in the streets and at its safe shelter, rehabilitation, informal education, reintegration in their families and – when this is not possible – referral to long-term facilities .[2]

To better assist the increasing number of children migrating to Pattaya annually, the CPDC is building  a larger rehabilitation program with protection facilities. In 2010 the CPDC will  also establish a drop in center in Central Pattaya, easily reachable by street living and working children, and strengthen its safe shelter and rehabilitation facilities.

“The Child Protection and Development Center Project” aims to provide protection to any street child in need, while offering safe shelter to up to 60 children, ages six—eighteen, at any given time.

[1] Supagon Noja recognizes there are no exact statistics on homeless children in Thailand, but cites increasing numbers in cities likely total between 20,000 and 25,000 children. Supagon Noja, “Child Protection and Development Center,” NGO Brief, English translation, from Thai 2007. pg 5. Accessible through the Pattaya Orphanage.

[2] Other organizations provide services, contributions, and assistance to extremely poor children in Pattaya, but they do not operate outreach child protection programs. The other organizations include: the MERCY Center, , the Redemptorist Drop-in Center, the Pattaya Street Kids Project, and the TAMAR organization.

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