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Event Detail

Vietnam's Children's Forum

Event Details

On 22 August 2004, children gathered in Hanoi to speak out on preventing child trafficking and child labour.

The three-day "National Children's Forum," was supported by IOM, the Vietnamese Young Pioneers' Council, Save the Children UK, ILO, UNICEF, and UNIAP. They brought together over 150 children aged between 12-18 from seven Vietnamese provinces.

The event added rarely heard voices to South East Asia's growing public debate on combating human trafficking and child labour.

It provided a unique perspective for Vietnamese and other policy makers scheduled to participate in the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking in Yangon in October. A group of children from the National Forum was selected by their peers to take part in a Mekong Regional Children's Forum in Bangkok in early October, which will in turn make recommendations to the ministers.

Work on the National Forum, which is one of several initiatives supported by the Vietnamese authorities to raise public awareness of human trafficking and child labour, started in May 2004.

IOM has a number of counter trafficking projects in Vietnam. IOM projects in the country include the USAID-funded Little Rose Shelter for trafficking victims in Ho Chi Minh City, a trafficking awareness campaign in cooperation with the Women's Union, and a return and reintegration scheme for victims trafficked between the countries of the greater Mekong region. It has also produced an acclaimed full-length feature counter trafficking cartoon, "Shattered Dreams," which was shown in Vietnamese at the National Children's Forum.¹

¹http://www.iom.int/en/archive/pbn200804.shtml