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News & Updates

Human Trafficking in Vietnam

September 2005

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will continue to help the Vietnamese judicial system and law enforcement agencies improve their capacity to combat human trafficking in Viet Nam. The second phase of the project "Strengthening the Legal and Law Enforcement Institutions in Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Persons" was signed by Senior Lieut. Gen. Le The Tiem, Deputy Minister of Public Security, and Narumi Yamada, chief of the UNODC's Viet Nam Representative Office, in Ha Noi on 26 August 2005.

The UNODC will conduct the second phase of a project which involves the Ministries of Public Security and Justice, and Viet Nam's Border Guard Army. The project aims to strengthen current mechanisms that prevent and combat human trafficking by creating favorable conditions for the judicial and law enforcement agencies, improving criminal investigations, prosecution procedures and judges' skills as well as training officers of related agencies.

The project will also help the country to ratify the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and support the implementation of the National Action Programme on trafficking.¹

Training Needs Assessment Workshop

A Training Needs Assessment Workshop was held in Ho Chi Minh City on 18-19 August 2005, hosted by the General Police Department in cooperation with international organizations (ILO, IOM, SCUK, UNIAP and UNICEF).

35 key officials from multi-sectoral government agencies from Ho Chi Minh City and other Southern provinces including An Giang, Can Tho, Dong Thap, Tay Ninh, Hau Giang, Kien Giang attended the workshop. The Training Needs Assessment Workshop looked at the current status of training for agencies working on trafficking issues and identified training needs across the major areas of prevention, repatriation, reintegration, protection, legal frameworks and law enforcement, coordination, monitoring and evaluation.

The information will be combined with the results of a similar exercise held in the North of Vietnam in March this year, to give an overall picture of training needs across a range of concerned agencies to help in developing of a multi-sectoral training strategy.

Police schooled in anti-trafficking²

Law enforcement officials responsible for combating the problem of human trafficking in Southeast Asia will receive training through a programme co-ordinated by international organisations and the Ministry of Public Security.

The announcement came at a seminar in HCM City last week jointly organised by the Ministry of Public Security, the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Subregion, the UN Children's Fund, the International Labour Organisation, the International Organisation for Migration and Save the Children UK.

Seminar participants discussed measures to prevent human trafficking and repatriate and reintegrate its victims back into their communities. Participants were given updates on the current situation, new forms of human trafficking and information that would enable officials in-charge to combat the problem more effectively.

The announced 2005-2007 training programme will target not only Vietnamese officials but also officials from other countries in the Greater Mekong subregion.

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¹ "UNODC Helps Viet Nam Combat Human Trafficking." Viet Nam News Agency. 26 August 2005.
² Police Schooled in Anti-Trafficking. 31 August 2005. http://www.thsv.org/news_details.aspx?newsID=691