Vietnamese police on Tuesday announced the start of their annual two-month campaign to combat human trafficking to places such as China and Cambodia, after about 200 cases were uncovered this year.
The campaign starts next week and focuses on areas bordering China in the north and Cambodia in the south, said an official from the Hanoi police General Department, who refused to be named.
Such campaigns were first instituted in 2004.
"Each year, we discover between 200 and 300 cases of trafficking children and women," the official told AFP without providing further details.
National officials are to coordinate with institutions in China, Cambodia and Laos to better combat the problem, said the state newspaper Vietnam News.
Thousands of Vietnamese women are believed to be trafficked every year especially to China and Cambodia, lured by promises of jobs but then forced to work as prostitutes or to marry.
Vietnam News said that since 2005 there had been 1,600 cases of human trafficking with 4,300 victims.
"Reasons for trafficking were the economic crisis, unemployment and residents' low awareness of the law," Nguyen Tri Phuong, deputy head of the police department for social order offences, was quoted as saying.
Vietnam News reported that since the beginning of this year, 191 trafficking cases involving 417 women and children had been detected.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
