In 2008 Vietnam was primarily a source country for women and children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Women and children were 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 were trafficked to the P.R.C., Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea via fraudulent or misrepresented marriages for commercial exploitation or forced labor. Vietnam was 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 was a destination country for Cambodian children trafficked to urban centers for forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. The country had an internal trafficking problem with women and children from rural areas trafficked to urban centers for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Vietnam was 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]
In 2008 the Government of Vietnam did 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]
The country ratified the 2000 TIP Protocol in June 2012.[2]
The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.[3] The country was placed on the Tier 2 Watch List in 2023.[4]
In 2021 more than 60% of trafficked people in the Vietnam-China human trafficking crimes originated from ethnic minorities living in Vietnam, primarily from the Thai and the Hmong.[5]
In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave the country a score of 7 out of 10 for human trafficking, noting that while the situation had worsened since Covid, the government was not carrying out the minimum international standard work to prevent this crime. [6]