Expanding our anti-trafficking work into Vietnam

Hope for Justice has worked in South-East Asia for many years, through our projects in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This year, we have expanded operations into Vietnam, beginning with training and prevention work.

Working with our partner organisation, Giving It Back To Kids, we have undertaken preventative anti-trafficking educational sessions and delivered community awareness training on the realities of modern slavery to 1,568 people, including around 1,000 children at six schools.

Hope for Justice International Programme Director, Neil Wain, said: “Having seen for myself the realities of human trafficking in Vietnam and the horrendous conditions endured by children forced to work underground in gold mines, girls and young women tricked into the sex industry or forced marriages to foreigners, and workers trapped in debt bondage, it’s been incredibly encouraging to see this educational work really take off. We and our partners know it is already making a tremendous difference and it will be life-changing.”

This work in Quang Nam province has been focused on ethnic groups who have been targeted by traffickers in the past and have often been vulnerable to exploitation.

Our work often takes place in very remote rural areas, where communities are often poorer and less educated. Traffickers’ promises of lucrative jobs in other countries or cities can often be very tempting to people in those regions, who do not realise that they or their children will end up controlled, exploited and abused.

Our training is aimed at keeping the children safe and raising awareness of the dangers of such offers, as well as building resilience in the communities to the traffickers.

We are working closely with our charity partner as well as government officials in Quang Nam province and the local Women’s Union.