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FOR Thu Ha, life has been a case of lost childhood and shattered dreams through no fault of hers. Trafficked at the age of 12 from the Cambodian border town of Poipet into neighbouring Thailand, she has only known a life of extreme hardship and exploitation by adults.

"I was sold to a Thai couple by my Vietnamese stepfather and taken across the border," she said in an interview. "In Thailand, I worked day and night for the couple looking after their three children and later in the evening selling roses in bars, restaurants and nightclubs.''

Thu Ha related her ill treatment by the couple. "Every night I gave them all the money I got selling roses. If I earned between 500 to 700 Thai baht (12.30 to 17.30 U.S. dollars), they let me eat. If I earned less than that, I had to go to bed hungry."

According to a report from the Institute of Population and Social Research of Mahidol University in Thailand, commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), trafficked migrant children are among the most severely affected victims of exploitative child labour.

"Children living in a foreign country with foreign customs and language are easily deceived and often treated like slaves," said the report. "In their isolation, they don't know where to turn for help. They can't use normal channels, and often face discrimination and harassment."

For the ILO, a trafficked child is one "who is recruited and transported from one place to another across a national border, with or without the child's consent''.

Adds the organisation: "At the destination, the child is coerced or semi-forced (by deceptive information) to engage in activities under exploitative and abusive conditions."

There is lack of reliable data on trafficking of children in the Mekong region, which both Thailand and Cambodia are part of. But the Bangkok-based group Child Workers in Asia estimates that to date about 200,000 foreign children from Burma, Laos and Cambodia have been trafficked in to Thailand for prostitution and work at construction sites and sweatshops.

The group also estimates that 95 percent of child beggars in Thailand are from Cambodia.

For Thu Ha, her flower-selling rounds in the bars and restaurants soon came to an end after she was arrested by Thai police and deported across the border.

In March, Thai police deported 236 Cambodians, of whom 142 were children.

Soon after being deported, Thu Ha made her way back to her home in Poipet, in north-western Cambodia. But after a while her parents packed her off to Thailand again, this time with a neighbour whom she called 'grandma'.

"In Thailand, with grandma, I begged on the streets all day and could earn between 300 to 400 Thai baht (7.40 to 9.90 U.S. dollars). I felt ashamed if I went back empty-handed because we were all so poor," she said.

One day 'grandma' took Thu Ha back to her Cambodian home. What was supposed to be a happy reunion was soon shattered when her Vietnamese stepfather raped her.

The family soon split up after the rape and together with her mother, Thu Ha crossed the border for the third time and ended up selling flowers in Thailand.

Plagued by decades of civil war that ended in the early nineties, Cambodia is limping its way into recovery. But many Cambodians still face excessive poverty, malnutrition and poor health. For them, the future offers little hope in a country where life expectancy is 53 years and only 35 percent of the people are literate.

Daily life in the war-battered country is a struggle where nine-tenths of the population try to eke a living in the countryside still littered with land mines.

The lack of water in Poipet, together with unexploded mines in the countryside, hinders farming there. There are no major industries in the border town and that means little work is available.

It comes as no surprise that Thailand is seen as the land of opportunity for many Cambodians keen to escape the cycle of poverty in their country.

"Existing employment opportunities in Thailand and the economic and political hardships in surrounding countries direct the flow of migratory movements," cites a study done by the ILO-affiliated International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

"In line with this more global trend, there exist a number of well established trafficking routes in the Mekong subregion. Thailand is the main receiving country," adds the IPEC study.

Most trafficking takes place over land, and there are well known gateways from each country.

Poipet faces Thailand's Aranyaprathet town in eastern Sakaeo province. Here, Thais and Cambodians populate settlements on both sides of the border and crossing over for the day is easy.

The IPEC study points out that with economic growth and increasing school enrolment rates, fewer Thai children are now in the labour market but the demand for foreign child labourers has increased.

For some children like Chamran, the experience of shuttling between Bangkok and the Thai-Cambodian border in a bid to escape the police might even make them traffickers themselves.

Chamran was 13 when he was convinced by a Vietnamese woman to follow her to Thailand. Both travelled to Bangkok where he sold candies on the street for her.

Soon Chamran was arrested by police and held in a Bangkok prison before being deported back to Cambodia. But that did not deter him from returning back to the city. "I've been back and forth from Poipet to Bangkok at least four times," he said proudly.

He explained his route and the tactics used to dodge the police. "I went overland from Poipet to Aranyaprathet town. From there, I'll catch the train to Bangkok. If I saw police or ticket inspectors on the train, I'll either hide in the toilet or run outside and climb up the roof of the train."

Chamran refuses to reveal the whereabouts of his parents and said his home was on the streets of Bangkok.

"I do all kinds of things here with other street kids beg, steal, sell candies, smoke, take drugs and play videogames," he said rather nonchalantly.

One way to prevent child labour at the community level is by showing children and their parents the real problems they will face if they go to the city, and by organising community-based surveillance.

Families are often lied to by agents and promises of jobs and money are rarely kept. The other approach is through rehabilitation and reintegration once the children return home.

But many children have been forced to lead a criminal existence and reintegrating them into everyday life is not easy.

A social worker in Poipet who only wanted to be identified as Patrick explained: "The people here have seen extreme violence in the war. They have seen death, experienced life in refugee camps and now live a dirt-poor life."

"They don't see any value in their lives or the lives of their children. For them it is a daily survival game and so it's hard to change their ways,'' he said.

Vannaphone Sitthirath of Lao National Television wrote this story under the IPS-Rockefeller Foundation fellowship programme 'Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation'.