Vietnam
Human trafficking issue tackled at Hanoi meeting
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The problem of human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region of Southeast Asia drew senior international government figures to Hanoi on Tuesday.
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The problem of human trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region of Southeast Asia drew senior international government figures to Hanoi on Tuesday.
The Senior Officials Meeting 3 will continue an ongoing process of developing and implementing a three-year action plan to tackle human trafficking. The process is pursuant to a memorandum of understanding signed last year by the six governments in the region, including Viet Nam, Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
The three-day conference follows a ministerial-level meeting of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT) in Yangon, Myanmar, on October 29, 2004.
The 2005-07 COMMIT Sub-regional Plan of Action links Mekong nations and UN agencies and NGOs as implementing partners in collaborative efforts to protect victims of human trafficking, promote co-operation in investigating and prosecuting traffickers, and undertake protective efforts to address vulnerability to trafficking.
Pursuant to the memorandum of understanding, the six Mekong nations will build a cooperative network as the sub-region is seen the world over as a hot spot for human trafficking. They will undertake measures to prevent and combat trafficking and prosecute human trafficking criminals, as well as help trafficked people repatriate to their homelands and protect victims.
Speaking at the conference, Viet Nam’s Deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyen Van Tinh said it’s difficult to define the number of trafficked victims but the trend in the world and the region is that the crime is increasing.
Tinh said the Vietnamese Government has affirmed its determination to fight against the crime by issuing policies and taking necessary measures to stem the tide of human trafficking, particularly of women and children.
Viet Nam is one of first countries in the world to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The country recently established a Steering Committee for the National Programme to Prevent and Combat the Trafficking of Women and Children headed by Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem.
"We, the representatives of Mekong Sub-regional countries, affirm that we will work together with our best efforts to stop the crime of human trafficking. We call on the international community to lend a hand in building a better world, eliminating all actions that exploit people and abuse human rights," said Tinh.
Jordan Ryan, UN resident co-ordinator and resident representative in Viet Nam of the UN Development Programme, said that the UN recognises that human trafficking is a complex problem that often crosses international borders and that, therefore, requires international cooperation.
The Government of Viet Nam, he said, has correctly identified in a range of policy documents some of the problems connected to human trafficking, including urban poverty and rights of migrants, disparities of wealth between rural and urban areas, and the need for stronger support services.
"With the leadership of the Government, and with the hard work of the Ministry of Public Security and its partners on the National Steering Committee, a comprehensive approach is being forged. We recognise that the objective of today’s meeting, linking the countries of the Mekong region more closely together in creating systems to cooperate in areas of protection of victims, prevention of trafficking, and prosecution of traffickers, is in fact an important part of Viet Nam’s strategy," said Ryan. — VNS