CAMBODIA

The domestic violence crisis in Cambodia is directly linked to the genocide's legacy. Men who grew up in the post-genocide period — raised by traumatized parents who had no model of healthy relationship, no therapeutic support, and a culture shattered to its foundations — express their unprocessed pain through the only channels available: alcohol and violence. The cheap rice wine consumed by Cambodian men in quantities that would alarm any public health authority is both symptom and cause — men drink to suppress memories they can't articulate, and the drinking produces the violence that creates new trauma. Meanwhile, the sex tourism industry in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap creates a different masculine crisis: the normalization of male exploitation of women and children in an economy where poverty makes everything for sale.