Kien Giang Women’s Union fighting against trafficking in women and children

According to Kien Giang Women's Union, from 2006 until now there have been 41 women and children who were trafficked abroad, mainly sold into brothels in Cambodia, Malaysia, China, etc. Of these, 16 victims managed to escape by themselves, 8 were ransomed by their family’s land mortgage, and 8 were rescued by Women’s Union in coordination with relevant agencies such as Police, Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs. High risk of being cheated and trafficked lies with women getting married to foreigners. In Kien Giang province, from 2006 until now, there have been 2,400 women married to foreigners. Most of them are poor, disadvantaged and less educated, which makes them more vulnerable to trafficking than others.

In order to push up the prevention of trafficking in women and children, Kien Giang Women’s Union signed an agreement with the Police, Army and Border Guards for action coordination; integrated communication o­n trafficking in women and children into the movement “Entire people take part in national defense and social security preservation”, especially in border and island localities; promoted the communication through diversified methods, such aswomen’s meetings at grassroots, training courses, pilot models, and artistic contests o­n prevention of trafficking in human, focusing o­n the areas with high prevalence of high risk groups and returned victims….. With the support of international organizations (IOM, JICA), many models of community-based direct communication have shown their effectiveness, including the establishment of community support groups and domestic violence prevention clubs. Up to now, the province has established 34 core groups of prevention of trafficking in women and children with 340 members; 13 groups of 234 children at high risk – who are ethnic pupils from 3 remote Cambodian bordered communes.

In terms of communication to raise awareness, Kien Giang Women’s Union pays special attention to border districts, which have transport difficulty and women’s limited awareness. Communication activities there are aimed at raising women’s awareness o­n self-protection, traffickers’ tricks, and timely provision of information to relevant agencies to help identify and fight against traffickers.

Regarding returned victims of trafficking, Women’s Union met to give them timely encouragement and financial support for their life stabilization, alleviation of inferiority complex and community re-integration. Recently, with the support of Pacific Links Foundation (USA), Women’s Union has built an affection house worth 50 million VND for a poor woman – a returned victim of trafficking from Cambodia.

Furthermore, education for perpetrators is implemented via diversified methods by the Kien Giang Women’s Union. So far, Kien Giang Women’s Union in coordination with relevant agencies has provided education to more than 6,000 perpetrators, 1,500 of whom become good citizens, which helps their families to stabilize their lives…

Particularly, Kien Giang Women’s Union together with Women’s Union for Peace and Development in Kampot and Kep provinces (Cambodia) signed a memorandum for the period of 2006 – 2010 o­n strengthening solidarity and friendship among border districts and provinces. Thus, Women’s Union in 3 provinces organized experience sharing and exchange o­n prevention and combat of trafficking in women and children, raising awareness of people especially women and children; supporting girls to schools, counseling o­n foreigner-related marriage; vocational training, jobs generation for rural women…

Kien Giang Women’s Union’s activities have contributed to reducing the unsafe migration of female job seekers, raise awareness of denouncing traffickers in women and children through border. Although the trafficking in women and children has been reported to see a remarkable decrease in the recent year compared with that before the year 2000, there are still many challenges: Shortcomings in the coordination of relevant agencies and organizations, limited awareness of women in border areas, inferiority complex of some victims preventing them from reporting the crime, etc. This requires that Women’s Union continues to implement actively the prevention and combat of trafficking in human in the next term.