How ethnic minority groups in Vietnam get caught up in human trafficking, and why prevention starts long before any crimes are committed
Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation calls for better socio-economic opportunities to help young people avoid trafficking, the Five Corridors Project examines state effectiveness at dealing with migrant worker rights, and we launch a podcast series with Winrock’s USAID Asia CTIP project.
A new report by Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation highlights the vulnerability of young people from ethnic minority groups in Vietnam to involvement in human trafficking. The study examines 102 court cases concerning trafficking from Vietnam to China – of the 199 victims and 236 prosecuted traffickers covered by the report, more than 60 per cent were from minority groups including the H’mong, Thai, and Kho Mu.
H’mong people accounted for almost a third of total victims and 33 per cent of total traffickers, despite making up little more than one per cent of Vietnam’s population. Kinh people – the majority ethnic group at 85 per cent of the population – accounted for 38 per cent of total victims and 33 per cent of total traffickers. More than 60 per cent of traffickers were aged 19 to 35, while 10 of them were under 18. Men accounted for three fifths of traffickers, while all but one of the victims were women, with an average age of just over 19 years.
More than 33 per cent of victims were tricked with offers of false jobs within Vietnam, in China, or in other countries, while a quarter were recruited by marriage brokers with promises of a relationship with a Chinese man. In reality, more than 70 per cent were trafficked into domestic servitude or forced marriages in mountainous areas or rural villages in China.
Almost half the reported offenders had no prior criminal record. According to the study, more than 20 per cent had previously worked or lived in China, highlighting the significance of social networks in human trafficking. Despite the popular belief that many victims become traffickers themselves, less than two per cent of perpetrators fell into this category.
Most prosecuted traffickers were low-level recruiters rather than middlemen or high-level criminals. They came from underprivileged backgrounds and almost all were illiterate or did not finish high school – the situation was similar for their victims.
“[The report shows] that traffickers in Vietnam knew someone who lived and worked in China,” says co-author Le Thi Hong Luong in the South China Morning Post. “Those people requested their friends or family members to get involved in the crime by recruiting potential victims and transporting them to the [northern] border area.” Many of the victims knew the trafficker on some level – whether it was a friend, boyfriend, classmate, neighbor, colleague or even a family member – while more than a third were befriended online or over the phone by the perpetrator.
Blue Dragon says the economic and educational background of the traffickers highlights the need for investment in better socio-economic opportunities that could reduce the likelihood of people taking up trafficking as an income-generating strategy, as well as the vulnerability of victims.
Programs to prevent trafficking are often designed to help people who are vulnerable to being trafficked, such as scholarships to keep girls in school. It would seem logical that extending those programs to also keep potential traffickers in school, or to help them find legitimate jobs, would reduce human trafficking even further.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
We have recently been working on a podcast with USAID Asia CTIP and Winrock International and are excited to introduce Labor of Loss, a new podcast series that explores experiences of human trafficking and labour exploitation across Asia, taking listeners on a journey from a fishing fleet in South Korea to a palm oil plantation in Malaysia to a brick kiln in Cambodia. The first episode will be available on 30 July, and you can hear the trailer now.
Last week, the U.S. Senate passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans the import of products from China's Xinjiang region. This is the latest effort by Washington to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.
Migrants from Venezuela’s Warao indigenous community, who were forced to flee to Guyana due to hunger and the political and economic crisis, now find themselves forcibly recruited to work as illegal miners for no pay in their new country, according to a new report by Kapé Kapé, a Venezuelan human rights organization.
The Five Corridors Project, led by London-based human rights organization FairSquare Projects, researched five labour migration corridors to assess state effectiveness at dealing with migrant worker rights: Myanmar to Thailand; Nepal to Kuwait; Nepal to Qatar; Philippines to Taiwan; and Mexico to Canada. The report urges destination states to do more to incentivize fair recruitment, and calls for the end of tied visa systems and discriminatory exclusions from labour protections.
In this webinar recording, MEPs and human rights activists discuss a new EU instrument that helps facilitate import bans on products related to forced labour, as well as the state of play on EU trade policy and forced labour.
Aura Freedom recently published its thoughts on Ontario’s mandating of school boards to put anti-human trafficking protocols in place to protect students, as well as its analysis of the 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report from the U.S. State Department.
Many Bangladeshi migrant workers have been falling victim to labour exploitation, visa trading and human trafficking in Brunei over the years, officials and victims have said. They added that, in the absence of punitive action against the employers who perpetrate these crimes, such violations will continue unabated in the oil-rich country.
International Justice Mission has opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to focus on forced labour slavery; it will also work with local partners and other IJM offices in Southeast Asia to combat cross-border trafficking. It is currently recruiting for multiple positions for Malaysian nationals.
One of our community members is looking for organizations that work in or close to Roatán Island, Honduras, and have experience in the area of combatting sex trafficking of minors. Please reach out here.
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