Human trafficking in Vietnam

Vietnam is primarily a source country for women and children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. 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. Vietnamese women are trafficked to the P.R.C., Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea via fraudulent or misrepresented marriages for commercial exploitation or forced labor. Vietnam is also a source country for men and women who migrate willingly and legally for work in the construction, fishing, or manufacturing sectors in Malaysia, Taiwan, P.R.C., Thailand, and the Middle East but subsequently face conditions of forced labor or debt bondage. Vietnam is a destination country for Cambodian children trafficked to urban centers for forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Vietnam has an internal trafficking problem with women and children from rural areas trafficked to urban centers for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Vietnam is increasingly a destination for child sex tourism, with perpetrators from Japan, the Republic of Korea, the P.R.C., Taiwan, the UK, Australia, Europe, and the U.S. In 2007, an Australian non-governmental organization (NGO) uncovered 80 cases of commercial sexual exploitation of children by foreign tourists in the Sa Pa tourist area of Vietnam alone.^[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. The government stepped up prosecutions and strengthened cross-border cooperation on sex trafficking with Cambodia, China, and Thailand to rescue victims and arrest traffickers. 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. Vietnam collaborated with law enforcement from Cambodia, the P.R.C, and Laos to rescue victims and arrest traffickers suspected of sex trafficking.^[1] U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.^[2]

More than 60% of trafficked people in the Vietnam-China human trafficking crimes originate from ethnic minorities living in Vietnam, primarily from the Thai and the Hmong.^[3]