Mar 07, 2019 – Thousands of children trafficked from Vietnam to the UK are suffering horrendous exploitation and abuse in transit through Europe as different governments pass the buck on protecting them, according to new research by ECPAT UK, Anti-Slavery International and Pacific Links Foundation.
Every professional who comes into contact with children across Europe should be able to identify victims and protect children from harm.
Official figures show hundreds of Vietnamese children are trafficked from Vietnam to the UK each year, however it is widely accepted that the actual number of victims is likely to be significantly higher. In the UK, Vietnamese nationals are consistently within the top three nationalities of those identified as potential victims of trafficking, via the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – the figures from 2009-2018 show 3,187 Vietnamese adults and children victims were referred into the NRM.
Factors such as poverty, lack of political freedoms, and environmental disasters and climate change – combined with a lack of safe, legal migration routes – make children vulnerable to deceit by traffickers and risky job offers abroad.
