Vietnamese government officials recently met with their
counterparts in the Philippines as part of a study tour focused on
sharing best practices in the fight against trafficking in Asia.

The study tour, from Jan. 10 to 13, was coordinated by IOM Viet
Nam and IOM Philippines and included visits to various government
and non-government agencies working on counter-trafficking.

Col. Le Dang Khoa, Deputy Head of the Standing Office for
Criminal, Drug Prevention and Control of Viet Nam’s Ministry
of Public Security, led the 10-member delegation from Viet Nam,
which included officials from Vietnam’s ministries of Labour,
Invalids and Social Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Public Security,
Justice and Central Women’s Union.

The group met with members of the Philippine’s Department
of Justice, Bureau of Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Social Welfare
and Development, Philippine National Police’s Women and
Children Protection Center, the Overseas Workers Welfare
Administration and the Philippine Commission on Women.

Specifically, the tour explored coordination mechanisms in an
Asian country between government and non-government agencies in the
prevention, protection and prosecution of trafficking cases in
women and children.

The Vietnamese delegates also had a chance to see programmes at
work with visits to the Batis Center for Women, which caters to the
needs of distressed overseas Filipino workers as well as the
“The Haven”, which provides temporary shelter and
protective custody of women who are victims of forced prostitution,
illegal recruitment and other abuses.

Although the global scale of human trafficking is difficult to
quantify, as many as 800,000 people may be trafficked across
international borders annually, with many more trafficked within
the borders of their own countries. Most of the victims are women
and young children.

IOM has been working to counter the trafficking of persons since
1994 and since then has implemented almost 500 projects in 85
countries, and assisted about 15,000 trafficked persons.