Brian McConaghy

Who is Brian McConaghy?

Brian McConaghy is the founder of Ratanak International and a former Canadian forensic scientist who left the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in order to dedicate all his energies to ending child abuse and human trafficking in Cambodia. He had already founded Ratanak International, in 1989, a Christian charity dedicated to helping the people of Cambodia rebuild their country that for decades had been torn apart by civil war, revolution and genocide. From 1990 onwards McConaghy and Ratanak partnered on projects that built clinics, hospitals and schools, opened orphanages, provided shelters for the elderly and AIDS victims and ran and initiated emergency food distribution programs in response to droughts and flooding in Cambodia. In 2004, these relief projects continued, yet Ratanak's work also took on a whole new dimension by beginning to work on the front lines in Cambodia on projects that rescue and rehabilitate children sold into sexual slavery.

McConaghy named the organization Ratanak, which means 'precious gem' in Khmer, after he watched an 11-month-old Cambodian baby called Ratanak die because of a basic lack of medical aid in John Pilger's documentary film Cambodia Year Ten.