Anti-trafficking training for police officers from southern provinces

Combatting human trafficking and child exploitation is a top priority for US Mission Vietnam and the Ministry of Public Security, and an area of expanding cooperation. Source: US Consulate General

US Mission Vietnam and the Ministry of Public Security conducted a November 17-19 training in HCMC on human trafficking and child exploitation for police officers from southern provinces. This followed a similar training for police from northern provinces in Ha Long city in the northern province of Quang Ninh from November 3-5 with US Mission representatives from DHS Homeland Security Investigations, the Regional Security Office, and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.

Over the past quarter-century, the Vietnam-US Comprehensive Partnership has developed extensively in various fields with six effective and substantive bilateral dialogue mechanisms. The two countries are also members of many multilateral cooperation arrangements. The cooperation between the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and relevant US agencies in the field of security and order has been consolidated and developed positively, contributing to strengthening the strategic trust between the two countries.

Police officers are considered as front line for detecting the signs of human trafficking. However, without training and education on human trafficking our law enforcement officers don’t recognize it. Our law enforcement officers who have not received training on human trafficking will often realize something isn’t right, but don’t know what they are looking at. 

Vietnam is a human trafficking hotspot with the crime generating tens of billions of dollars annually, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

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.

Eighty percent of victims end up in China, which suffers from one of the worst gender imbalances due to its one-child policy and illegal abortion of female fetuses by parents who prefer sons, leading to increasing trafficking of Vietnamese women and baby girls to that country.

Vietnam reported 60 human trafficking cases in the first half of 2020, with 90 victims, mainly women and children, sold to foreign countries. This marks a year-on-year drop of 31 percent in the number of cases and and 37 percent in the number of victims, according to a report by the Vietnam Women's Union released at a workshop in August.

Tu Pham