More than 50 million people in our world live in slavery.
Human trafficking is a crime
Human trafficking, also known as modern slavery, involves exploiting people for sex or making them work, using force, threats, manipulation or deceit.
Child trafficking and sex trafficking are particularly exploitative practices.
Vietnamese children, women and men are trafficked into brothels, forced marriages, forced scamming, farms, factories, fishing boats, and mines.
Forced scamming is a particularly violent form of exploitation that entails the trafficking of people to force them to conduct lucrative criminal activities online. In recent years, forced scamming has increased exponentially across Southeast Asia.
In Vietnam, human traffickers target people matching certain “profiles”; people in situations making them particularly vulnerable. They particularly target:
Members of ethnic communities in disadvantaged areas;
Children who are out of school;
Families living in, or close to, the poverty line;
Unemployed people;
People who migrate for work.
In total, there are 16,000,000 people, in a population of 102,000,000, who match these profiles.
…many victims know their traffickers – they may be distant family members, neighbours or ‘friends’…
Vietnamese girls and women are commonly trafficked to neighbouring countries where they are sold into the commercial sex trade or are forced into marriage.
Boys and girls who are homeless on the city streets are targeted by pimps and paedophiles to be abused and traded.
Young people are held captive in industrial-scale compounds where they are forced to conduct online fraud. They are burdened with fabricated debts and subjected to constant violence.
Criminal gangs smuggle Vietnamese people to other countries in Southeast Asia, or to the United Kingdom, mainland Europe and other places. Once there, they are vulnerable to being trafficked because they lack legal protection.
People who have been trafficked are often unable to call for help, and know that if they are caught doing so, they will be brutally punished.
Human traffickers are skilled at making their victims feel that it is their own fault. Sometimes they force or manipulate their victim into committing a crime, so that they will fear going to the police. Victim blaming is a very common problem for trafficking survivors.
Many traffickers control their victims using violence and threats.
See the Blue Dragon Fact Sheet on Human Trafficking in Vietnam to learn more.
How can we end human trafficking?
The problem is massive, so we must all be a part of the solution.
Blue Dragon takes an integrated approach to combating human trafficking
We are strengthening families, schools, communities and systems to bring human trafficking to an end.
We rescue people from slavery and care for them as they recover, while representing them in court to put their traffickers behind bars.
All that we learn through our frontline work, we apply to legal reform and strengthening national systems that keep people safe.
Over twenty years, Blue Dragon has built a global community of supporters and partners all working together to protect children, families and communities. Be part of our community to change lives!
Interested in learning about Blue Dragon’s rescue operations?
You can watch this short film which introduces you to some of the people who are involved in this vitally important work every day.
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