Somaly Mam

Somaly Mam (2013)

Somaly Mam (* 1970 in Bou Sra in the Cambodian province of Mondulkiri ) is an activist in the fight against the sexual exploitation of young girls and women.

Life

Somaly Mam grew up in poverty and fell into a web of slavery and sexual exploitation in her childhood. For several years she was forced into prostitution in a brothel in Phnom Penh , but was able to flee to France with help in 1993. In Paris she married Pierre Legros. In 1996 she founded the international organization AFESIP ( Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire ), which campaigns against child prostitution and human trafficking in Asia. In 2007 she founded the Somaly Mam Foundation together with the Americans Jared Greenberg and Nicholas Lumpp , of which she is president. The aim of the foundation is to provide international information about the situation of forced prostitutes as well as help with getting out under the motto “Survivors help survivors”. According to her own statement, her organization has saved 5,000 girls in the past twelve years (as of 2010).

Somaly Mam tries to raise public awareness of child prostitution, human trafficking and corruption in Cambodia. But high-level politicians and officials are also accused of complicity, which brings you many powerful opponents.

“The tyranny and the long civil war have ruined this country morally. The Khmer don't even know who they are anymore. Of course - you can still meet wonderful people, especially in the fields, who do not hesitate to share every meal. But in the cities there is corruption, crime and greed for money almost everywhere. "

- Somaly mam

In May 2014 Newsweek published a cover story according to which the biography of Somaly Mam is fictitious and has repeatedly led young women to present fabricated stories of sexual exploitation to the media (also in the USA and France). Mam then resigned from all of her offices.

In 2015 she founded a new organization, the New Somaly Mam Fund .

Awards

In 1998 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for "International Cooperation" from the hands of the Spanish Crown Prince .

She was one of the eight flag-bearers at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin (Italy).

In October 2006 she was named WOMAN OF THE YEAR by the American magazine Glamor in New York's Carnegie Hall - u. a. with Sandra Bullock, Queen Latifah, Katherine Jefferts Schori, Laurie David, Tammy Duckworth and Billie Jean King.

In 2008, the German Federal President Horst Köhler presented her with the Roland Berger Prize for Human Dignity , endowed with one million euros .

In 2008 she was awarded the Swedish Government 's The World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child .

In 2009, Time magazine chose her as one of the 100 most influential people of the year.

In 2011 she sat on a jury consisting of influential personalities who were involved in the selection of the universal logo for human rights .

literature

• Somaly Mam: The Silence of Innocence , Marion von Schröder Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-547-71108-8
• Erich Follath : The children of the Killing Fields - Cambodia's path from terror land to tourist paradise, DVA non-fiction book, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-421-04387-0

Web links

• Web presence of the organization AFESIP
• Website of the Somaly Mam Foundation
• New York Times video portrait with interview from 2008
• Press release on the award of the Roland Berger Prize
• Jeanne Rubner: Fight against child prostitution. Reborn In: Süddeutsche.de, January 27, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Interview by Ali Al-Nasani in Amnesty Journal 02/03 2010 .
2. ↑ Newsweek: Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking , May 21, 2014
3. ↑ Somaly Mam shoots for redemption with 'new' organization , January 26, 2015
4. ↑ The jury  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.