Gone
In 2019, 11 people were missing from a mountainous community in northern Vietnam.
Each of the missing people had accepted a job offer in a faraway place. After leaving to begin work, they vanished.
That was all their families knew about them. They didn’t know if they’d made it to their new workplace, if they planned to come back or even if they were still alive. All they knew is that they were gone.
No other choice
Cases of people going missing after travelling for work are common throughout much of rural Vietnam. Driven to desperation by deep-rooted problems such as poverty, people are forced to accept whatever work they can find – even if they know there is a risk of being trafficked.
So when Blue Dragon began formalising our strategy to end human trafficking, it became clear that we would have to go beyond awareness raising and focus on fixing the root causes.
“While it’s common to hear about awareness raising, we’ve seen over time that traffickers just keep succeeding and the number of people in slavery keeps growing. Most people become vulnerable to trafficking when they’re already marginalised by poverty or their ethnicity and then something goes wrong in their life. They find themselves in debt, or there’s an illness in the family, or they’ve lost their job.”
Blue Dragon’s success in stamping out human trafficking has been in creating localised systems that can both anticipate and respond to these issues. It is a constantly evolving process informed by all areas of our work – particularly our work to support people who have survived human trafficking.
A mountainous province where the risk of trafficking is high.
Reframed
One thing that has helped Blue Dragon gain a deeper understanding of the root causes of human trafficking is our work to rescue people trapped in slavery. We have rescued over 2,000 people in the last 20 years, and each person we rescue gives us new insights that we use to develop our strategy to end this crime for good.
“An important aspect of rescue work is that it doesn’t just free survivors, it generates knowledge,” shares Luong, who works directly with communities across Vietnam. “When we rescue someone and provide legal representation, we learn not only about their experience, but also about the traffickers. Over time, we saw something uncomfortable but important: many traffickers come from the same communities as the people they traffic.”
This insight reframed how we viewed the trafficking landscape. Rather than simply being a case of bad people harming innocent people, it showed that the deep-rooted problems that force people into desperation are often the same things that push people into exploiting others simply to survive.
“Some people are exploited, some become exploiters,” shares Luong. “So we began building an ecosystem of protection for the whole community, addressing poverty, school dropout and unsafe migration. That is why we invest in things like livelihoods, housing and education support. Prevention must reduce vulnerability on all sides, before people are exploited or driven to exploitation.”
A group of 12 people returning to Vietnam after being rescued from slavery by Blue Dragon.
Found
To prevent exploitation on all sides, Blue Dragon began setting up Anti-Trafficking Boards in areas where the risk of trafficking is high. These boards are run by community leaders, such as police officers, teachers and Women’s Union officials. We work with them to develop and refine effective practices to prevent trafficking, which they then pass onto their communities through workshops, village meetings and home visits.
Chuyen, a Blue Dragon social worker, was instrumental in setting up the first Anti-Trafficking Boards in the mountainous northern province of Tuyen Quang, formerly known as Ha Giang, in 2019.
“First, we trained the members and guided them on how to conduct household visits. Each member was responsible for eight households, and they visited them one by one.”
As the board members visited each home, they asked a list of questions designed by Blue Dragon. One of which was: “Is anyone in your household working far away and not in contact with the family?”
In just one round of household visits, the Board identified 11 people who had gone missing.
“Not many people in rural ethnic communities had phones at that time,” shares Chuyen. “Maybe some of the missing people did, but their number had changed or they’d lost it.”
Far from home and out of touch with their families, the missing people were at extremely high risk of being trafficked. It is not uncommon for people in these situations to disappear entirely, their families never learning what happened to them. We needed to act immediately.
Chuyen (left) visiting a family with members of an Anti-Trafficking Board.
Building resilience
As soon as Blue Dragon learned about the 11 missing people in Tuyen Quang, we informed the authorities. The police then tracked down each person and reunited them with their family, where they had our support to begin building a new life within the safety of their community.
In those early household visits, Blue Dragon was in the process of teaching communities the warning signs of human trafficking. As we have continued to do this over time, communities have absorbed this knowledge and used it to protect themselves without constant interventions from us.
“In places like Tuyen Quang, the difference over time is visible,” shares Luong. “When we first started working there, many families did not recognise trafficking tactics. Unsafe migration was normalised. People did not know where to report concerns.”
As a result, cases of trafficking were often discovered too late. Thanks to the growth of self-regulating Anti-Trafficking Boards set up and run by community members, things have gradually changed.
“Now, community members can recognise early warning signs. Schools screen students at high risk, members of the local Women’s Union and police coordinate responses quickly, and cases are reported earlier, often before trafficking ever happens.”
Immediate action, long-term support
Once we have made people safe, we give them fast and effective support to make sure that they can heal and thrive. As Michael shares:
“In situations of crisis, people need help immediately and the type of help needs to match their specific needs. One person might need help starting a small business; another might need a scholarship for the kids to stay in school.”
One person who is thriving thanks to support from an Anti-Trafficking Board is Phai. Having lived all her life in a small village in the mountains of Tuyen Quang, Phai and her husband are farmers. They work extremely hard from morning until after dark to provide for their two children, but have long struggled to pay for food.
Getting desperate, Phai looked for jobs that would help to lift her family out of poverty. It wasn’t long before she received an offer. Phai was torn. If she took the job, she would finally be able to feed her children, provide them with warm clothes and pay their school fees on time. But something didn’t feel right.
Realising that the job offer sounded a lot like the human trafficking scams she had heard about at Board meetings, she refused. But the offers kept coming, and Phai grew scared that the people behind them would try to take her away.
“Just thinking about being tricked and taken from my home was terrifying. I kept worrying that I would lose my husband and my children forever.”
The Board advised Phai on how to respond to the job offers, letting her know that Blue Dragon would always be on hand when she needed guidance. Then we provided Phai with the means to expand her small farm at home, so that she can earn enough money to support her family without having to travel far or search for jobs online.
“I’m so happy now,” shares Phai. “I have a loving husband and children, and my farm animals are growing up strong and healthy. I’m so grateful to everyone who supported me so quickly when I needed help. I still get job offers, but I refuse them. And when they don’t listen I threaten to report them to the authorities. Thank you so much.”
Thanks to immediate intervention and long-term support to set up and run her own business from home, Phai and her family are safe to thrive. Her children are in school, her farm is generating a steady income and she is in control of her family’s future.
Phai speaking with Blue Dragon in her home.
Phai and the cow we provided her.
Beyond Blue Dragon
In the areas where Blue Dragon is working alongside the community to end human trafficking, exploitation is declining.
“Where we’ve set up Boards, there’s now almost no new trafficking victims compared to when I started working for Blue Dragon,” shares Chuyen. “Most of the recent trafficking cases we see are happening in districts outside the project area.”
To keep communities safe from human trafficking, Blue Dragon will keep adapting. Traffickers are constantly changing their tactics, and we will stay one step ahead of them all the way.
“Trafficking will continue to evolve, especially in the digital space,” shares Luong. “Recruitment methods will become more sophisticated, and cross-border patterns more complex. So our response must become smarter, faster, and more coordinated. Prevention, early detection and policy influence will take up an increasingly larger share of our effort.”
Anti-Trafficking Boards are replicable, scalable and have been proven to self-operate without our constant involvement. We have now set up boards in over 200 villages across the country, protecting 50,000 people every year.
So while it is vital that Blue Dragon continues to set up more such boards across the country, it is equally important that others use the model we have created to do the same.
“I see Blue Dragon’s role increasingly shifting from direct implementer to system builder,” shares Luong. “That means more local governments will independently run Anti-Trafficking Boards. Case management will be led by trained local social workers, there will be better integration of trafficking prevention into socioeconomic development plans, and we will see national-level adoption of the models we have piloted and refined.”
Only by working together in this way, scaling up proven systems of ending human trafficking across Vietnam and beyond, can we create a world where everyone is free from exploitation.
Safe to thrive: children on their way to school in a mountainous community.
