Imani Nakpangi, Canada's first convicted child trafficker, forced two young girls, aged 15 and 18, into prostitution for a 26 month period. He sold them at a rate of $200 for 30 minutes, and $300 for an hour and is estimated to have made over $400,000. He kept them...

Human trafficking happens in the dark shadowy alleyways of vague far-away places where violence and exploitation are visible and rampant. Sure, maybe a few people are trafficked into Canada, but the real problem is in Southeast Asia... or Eastern Europe... or... South America. Not here.

At least, that's what...

Cambodia held its fourth parliamentary election on July 27th, 2008. As predicted Hun Sen's ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP) came out on top with approximately 60% of the votes in their favor. International observers were out in force to monitor the election and the general consensus was that while...

Working in the NGO community in Northern Thailand, you can't help but hear about the Burmese refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. The camps are filled with hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees who have nowhere to go and are unable to return home. It is easy to point the...

I woke up in Phnom Penh one morning a few weeks ago to a loudspeaker blasting high pitched Khmer music and the sound of a voice repeating the same phrases over and over. I immediately assumed it was a wedding since waking up in Cambodia to abusively loud screeching music...

A few months ago I went to a rally in support of harm reduction services outside a UNAIDS meeting in Chiang Mai. The rally was organized by the Thai Aids Treatment Action Group (TTAG)and the People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) network of Northern Thailand.

Harm reduction is an approach...

Over the past six months I have been involved in a project addressing access to health care in the prison system in Northern Thailand. The initial focus of the project was HIV/AIDS and public health information and services in Chiang Mai Women's Prison. The community legal education aspect of the...

In Cambodia today, more than 150,000 people are threatened with eviction. Forty-five percent of the country's entire landmass has been sold off - including the land around Angkor Wat, expansive forested areas, the colonial buildings of Phnom Penh and islands off the south coast.

I have been writing about the positive experiences that I have had and the personal development that I have enjoyed while working in Southeast Asia over the last year. In order to present a more balanced picture, I wanted to briefly discuss another side of it - the frustrations, the...

Arriving back in Vancouver after spending three and a half months in Phnom Penh I was dazzled by how clean and functional it was. It is easy to slip back into the comforts of the Western world, and I would be remiss if I implied that the transition was tough...

Leaving law school for a semester in the middle of my second year to go work for an NGO in Northern Thailand was easier than I thought it would be. At least it seems that way now, looking back on it, but at the time it was daunting. The vast...