17, on receiving and providing assistance to sex trafficking victims returning from abroad. The trafficking of vulnerable young people from Vietnam to the UK is on the rise, with the majority trafficked into cannabis production, nail bars and forced prostitution. A trafficking report by the US Department of State in 2015 – which the Vietnamese government officials considered “not objective” – said border officials in high-risk trafficking areas increased their engagement to investigate trafficking cases, but official complicity remained an impediment to anti-trafficking efforts in Vietnam. Despite these efforts, unscrupulous third-party recruiting organizations often placed migrant workers in debt. MoLISA continued operating 400 social protection centers through local authorities to provide services to a wide range of vulnerable groups, including trafficking victims; these centers were unevenly staffed, under-resourced, and lacked appropriately trained personnel to assist victims. The 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report published by U.S. State Department says Vietnam is “a source country for men, women and children subjected to sex trafficking … The government decreased law enforcement efforts. Officials assigned to Taiwan and the Republic of Korea received briefings on assisting Vietnamese brides. Article 150 of the penal code criminalized labor trafficking and sex trafficking of adults and prescribed penalties of five to 10 years’ imprisonment and fines of 20 million to 100 million Vietnamese dong (VND) ($862 to $4,310). Chapter I 1 / 35 The Vietnam Women’s Union began a program with its counterpart in South Korea to set up pre-marriage counseling centers and hotlines in key source areas of Vietnam.[1]. It gives five requirements: 1) criminalizing of all forms of trafficking, 2) identifying victims and guaranteeing basic human rights, 3) adopting comprehensive prevention, protection, provision, prosecution, and participation approaches, 4) targeting all actors in human trafficking organization, and 5) acknowledging human trafficking as an international crime. In 2018, the government reported assisting all 490 identified victims (500 in 2017, 600 in 2016) with initial psychological counseling, healthcare consultations, and legal and financial assistance; the government reported providing an unspecified number of victims with reintegration assistance, including small business loans. Within the country, traffickers exploit Vietnamese men, women, and children—including street children and children with disabilities—in forced labor, although little information is available on these cases. While the merging of these departments could potentially improve the flow of information and interagency coordination, civil society reported this reshuffle, coupled with extremely high turnover within the MPS, significantly slowed law enforcement efforts. Some officials cited an increase in forced labor and noted incomplete data collection and poor interagency cooperation led to low victim identification. LAW ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION AND COMBAT Pursuant to the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which was amended and supplemented under Resolution No. The Vietnamese government demonstrated increased law enforcement efforts to combat trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation and uneven efforts to combat labor trafficking. • Cease subjecting Vietnamese confined to drug treatment centers to forced labor and allow independent verification that the practice has ended. Police arrested 606 suspected traffickers and prosecuted 178 cases, obtaining 339 individual convictions of trafficking offenders. [1], The Government of Vietnam does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Even as it is getting harder for them to do their work, organisations like AAT are needed more than ever. • Vigorously prosecute all forms of trafficking and convict and punish traffickers, including in cases involving forced labor or complicit officials. The definition of trafficking in the country’s trafficking in persons law does not fully correspond with international definitions, and may conflate smuggling and human trafficking … Civil society reported while the government made efforts to translate campaign materials into regional languages to increase awareness, many at-risk populations found the information abstract and difficult to understand. The Women’s Union, in partnership with NGOs and with foreign donor funding, continued to operate three shelters in urban cities, including one dedicated to trafficking victims. 3.2 Definition of Trafficking under Vietnamese Law 51 3.3 Human Trafficking as an Issue in Vietnam 56 3.3.1 The context of Vietnam 56 3.3.2 The Nature of Human Trafficking in Vietnam 58 3.4 Vietnamese Legal Framework on Trafficking Prevention and Victim Protection 62 3.4.1 Regulations on Trafficking … The government continued to support more ethnic minority’s languages on the hotline including English. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL), the national trade union under the direction of Vietnam’s Communist Party, took steps to prevent exploitation of Vietnamese workers abroad. Despite progress in some areas in recent years, many counter-trafficking challenges remain to be addressed in Viet Nam. There were no visible measures undertaken by the government to reduce demand for commercial sex acts. Women and children are trafficked to the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C), Cambodia, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Macau for sexual exploitation. Contrary to international best practices, a shelter confined victims for multiple years and limited residents’ freedom of movement. Civil society organizations reported assisting 167 victims of trafficking. Despite continued reports of official complicity, the government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of officials complicit in trafficking offenses. There were reports of children as young as six producing garments under conditions of forced labor in small privately owned garment factories and informal workshops, and that children as young as 12 worked while confined in government-run rehabilitation centers. Despite progress in some areas in recent years, many counter-trafficking challenges remain to be addressed in Viet Nam. LAW ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING PREVENTION AND COMBAT Pursuant to the 1992 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which was amended and supplemented under Resolution No. Disparate government bodies continued to report discrepant, overlapping, or incomplete data on anti-trafficking law enforcement and victim identification, and authorities often did not disaggregate trafficking offenses from possible migrant smuggling cases. The remaining 320 received convictions with sentencing of less than 15 years. Three separate traffickers were convicted and sentenced from 6–12 years for trafficking women to Macau to allegedly work as masseuses and then forced them into prostitution. Article 151 criminalized labor trafficking and sex trafficking of children under the age of 16 and prescribed penalties of seven to 12 years’ imprisonment and fines of 50 million to 200 million VND ($2,160 to $8,620). In August 2018, there were reports that 200 individuals who escaped a government-run drug treatment center claimed authorities forced them to work eight hours a day without compensation and subjected them to punishment, including beating, if they “misbehaved.” Vietnamese law allows for obligatory manual labor for prisoners, which allows forced labor to be used as a means of punishment for political and religious dissidents. Prisoners reportedly work in agriculture and manufacturing, and there have been reports of prisoners of conscience working in hazardous industries such as cashew processing. Complicit Vietnamese officials, primarily at commune and village levels, facilitate trafficking or exploit victims by accepting bribes from traffickers, overlooking trafficking indicators, and extorting money in exchange for reuniting victims with their families. Existing laws do not comprehensively cover trafficking in persons; however, various statutes in the Penal Code allow for all forms to be prosecuted. Vietnam has long been one of the top source countries for female human trafficking in Asia, with the majority of women and girls being sold to Cambodia, Malaysia and China. Chapter I 1 / 35 In September 2018, the Supreme People’s Court issued a circular detailing the trial procedures dealing with cases involving victims under the age of 18, designed to make court proceedings more child-friendly. Local and provincial government officials at times employed practices that could be re-traumatizing to victims of trafficking. Therefore Vietnam was downgraded to the Tier 2 Watch List. The extent of sex trafficking in Vietnam is unknown because of the lack of data, the underground nature of sex trafficking crimes, inadequate victim identification procedures, and other elements. Anti-slavery groups have been warning for years of an increase in Vietnamese being smuggled into the United Kingdom, to no avail. The government decreased efforts to protect victims. Social protection officials demonstrated a lack of familiarity with migrant worker vulnerability to trafficking, often considering them simply illegal workers. However, if Vietnam intends to eliminate human trafficking, especially among its children, then it must continue addressing the state of poverty of its people. The Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) reported that 422 women and child victims of sex trafficking were repatriated. A particularly problematic gap in the current law pertains to victims of trafficking aged 16 and 17. However, Vietnam’s control of child trafficking within the country itself needs to increase. Việt Nam sets aside every July 30 as the national day against traffickers. The enforcement of sex trafficking laws and investigating and prosecuting of cases have been hindered by corruption, apathy, border management problems, lack of cooperation among sectors, ignorance of … Traffickers increasingly use the internet, gaming sites, and particularly social media to lure potential victims into vulnerable situations; men often entice young women and girls with online dating relationships and persuade them to move abroad, then subject them to forced labor or sex trafficking. Traffickers increasingly exploit girls from ethnic minority communities in the northwest highlands, including in sex trafficking and domestic servitude, by channeling their criminal activities through the traditional practice of bride kidnapping. At the same time, there were some cases in which Vietnamese workers on contracts brokered by recruiters linked to state-licensed companies were exploited and, in its intervention, the government may have focused on upholding its image of Vietnam as an attractive source of guest workers, to the detriment of investigating complaints of trafficking. A Source Country: Vietnam is a predominant source country of human trafficking and also a destination country, mainly for Cambodian migrants. Việt Nam sets aside every July 30 as the national day against traffickers. It identified significantly fewer victims than in previous years. The Vietnamese government demonstrated increased law enforcement efforts to combat trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation and uneven efforts to combat labor trafficking. The government continued a five-year assessment on NAP implementation benchmarks. Child sex tourists, reportedly from elsewhere in Asia, the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, exploit children in Vietnam. The majority of traffickers are prosecuted under Articles 119, 120, and 275 of the Penal Code, which deal with trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. Traffickers subject some children to forced or bonded labor in brick factories, urban family homes, and privately run rural gold mines. The country has recorded over 3,400 victims of human trafficking since 2013, over 90 percent of them women, children and people from ethnic minority communities. Together, we identify cases of trafficking… A requirement that all tourists staying in hotels register their passports could assist in keeping child sex tourists away from Vietnam; however, many short-stay hotels geared towards prostitution and typically do not require registration. The government did not provide statistics disaggregating cases by type of trafficking, victim age or gender, source, or destination. Human trafficking is a big problem in Vietnam. Penalties prescribed for trafficking both for sexual and labor exploitation are sufficiently stringent and those for sexual exploitation are commensurate with those for other grave crimes, such as rape. The government maintained efforts to prevent trafficking. National authorities did not devote adequate funds for victim protection, encouraging provincial governments to use their own funds for trafficking programs to further decentralize this responsibility, and relied heavily on civil society to provide protection services with limited in-kind support. The procuracies (prosecutor’s office) reported initiating the prosecution of 194 defendants for trafficking offenses (245 in 2017, 295 in 2016, 442 in 2015, 472 in 2014) and the court system secured 213 convictions (244 in 2017, 275 in 2016); sentences ranged from less than three years to 20 years’ imprisonment, however some prison sentences were suspended. refugee/human rights laws and policies; and applicable caselaw – by describing this ... was a victim of human trafficking or modern slavery or not, unless ... 2.3.1 Victims of trafficking from Vietnam form a particular social group (PSG) Some recruitment companies are unresponsive to workers’ requests for assistance in situations of exploitation, and some charge excessive fees that trap workers in debt bondage. • Expand training for social workers, first responders and the judiciary on victim-centered approaches to working with victims of trafficking, including trauma-informed care. A number of victim assistance and assessment centers were established in particular border areas. Local and provincial government officials at times did not demonstrate a clear understanding of victim identification, including in some cases by conflating it with the confirmation of official identity documents. Vietnam actively worked with the USG on a successful prosecution of an American citizen who was a promoter of child sex tourism in Vietnam. Psycho-social services for victims remained underdeveloped, with training needed on trauma-informed approaches for all actors engaging with victims, including social workers, front-line officers, and the judiciary. To date, Van has provided legal representation in 83 court cases, helping nearly 100 victims of human trafficking and sexual abuse. The Vietnamese government demonstrated growing efforts at protecting victims in 2007, especially for victims of sex trafficking. These conditions led to a worker strike and, subsequently, altercations among workers and with the Jordanian police. U.S. Code, Title 22, Chapter 78 - Trafficking Victims Protection. The government did not report any prosecutions or convictions for crimes of labor trafficking such as forced labor or debt bondage. By Lindsey King . The ASEAN Post recently published an article regarding the state of human trafficking in the ASEAN region. Mimi Vu, an independent anti-trafficking and slavery expert based in Vietnam, said the smuggling of people from Vietnam to the UK continued in the months after the tragedy. “In Vietnam everything is about relationships, so the traffickers present a very friendly face,” said Michael Brosowski, founder and CEO of Hanoi NGO Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. 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