Overview
Vietnam is an “S” shaped country located along the eastern sea junction of the southern Indo chinese peninsula. China rests to the north, Laos and Cambodia to the west, and 3,260 km of uninterrupted coast to the south and east. With over 80 million inhabitants occupying just over 325,000 square kilometers, Vietnam is one of the most densely populated landmasses in Asia. Rural to urban migration over the past two decades has created increasingly large cites throughout the country, and currently, there are seven urban centers with a population over more than one million.
Economically, Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries in the world. This is despite the fact that the Vietnamese economy has been second only to China in terms of economic growth over the past decade. Reforms undertaken by the Vietnamese  government in the mid nineteen eighties have laid the groundwork for the transformation of Vietnam into a modern global economy. An emerging middle class has changed the demographic make up of Vietnam is a drastic manner. Many Vietnamese however, have been left behind by the progress. A full two thirds of the population continue to sustain their families with low wage field laboring employment. The cycle of poverty endured by these workers is often unending. All members of the family, including young children, are required to work as a means to survival. Over half of the country's students do not continue on to secondary school. Education is sacrificed for the basic necessities of life, creating a new generation of unskilled workers.
Human
Trafficking in Vietnam
Vietnam is a source and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. Vietnamese women and girls are trafficked to Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Czech Republic for sexual exploitation. State-owned labor export companies recruit and send workers abroad; some of these laborers have been known to suffer conditions of involuntary servitude or bonded or forced labor. Women from Vietnam are trafficked to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages for sexual exploitation and labor. Other Vietnamese women are recruited to travel to Singapore by offers of marriage to Singaporean men; after arrival they face coercion or pressure that makes them vulnerable to trafficking. Vietnam is a destination country for Cambodian children who are trafficked for the purpose of begging. There is also internal trafficking from rural to urban areas.
Sexual Exploitation in Vietnam
As members of a densely populated, under-educated, and impoverished society, Vietnamese women are at particularly high risk for sexual exploitation. As the labor market becomes increasingly stratified, certain groups are being marginalized, with little or no access to economic assets, education and social service. Rural women make up one such group. Migration to urban centers in order to find employment places such women into vulnerable situations. Seeking work, or being coerced to work, in sex related industries is one consequence of lack of options, perceived familial obligations, and manipulation by those is a positions of power.
Conservative estimates place the number of commercial sex workers in Vietnam at approximately 70,000. This number is likely a drastic underestimation, failing to account for many forms of 'informal sexual exploitation' such as abuse and rape of domestic servants and employees. It is currently thought that up to one third of all sex workers are minors below the age of eighteen. The lack of solid information – even reliable estimates – is due both to the nature of the phenomenon and also to the fact that few systematic studies have been conducted on the subject.
Further Reading
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