Vietnam-China trafficking on rise
The number of known cases of women and girls trafficked from Vietnam to China more than doubled last year, China's official Xinhua news agency has said.
Xinhua said 125 cases were detected of Vietnamese trafficked into China's Guangxi province, across the border.
This is partly due to better detection by both governments, but trafficking overall is also thought to be rising.
Analysts warn that China could replace Thailand in the next few years as the region's trafficking hub.
In the last few years, the Vietnamese and Chinese governments have launched joint programmes to try to crack down on trafficking.
They are now co-operating much more and sharing information more openly about victims and suspected trafficking gangs.
Last July, they worked together on a series of raids which led to more than 100 victims being rescued and about 12 smuggling rings broken up.
Girls getting younger
But despite these efforts, the traffic in Vietnamese women across the open, porous border with China still seems to be rising.
Unicef has been active in working with both governments to tackle the problem. The head of its child protection programme in China told the BBC trafficking did seem to be increasing.
The age of the trafficked girls was also falling, he said, and many were now just teenagers.
Most of the girls are sold into brothels, either in Guangxi or, increasingly, in the richer province of Guangdong.
Poverty in Vietnam is seen as a main factor. Many of the girls come from villages and are tricked by false promises of jobs in restaurants or factories.
The Chinese authorities have done a lot to control domestic trafficking within China but cross-border trafficking is proving far more difficult.
Analysts say women and girls are now trafficked into China from Vietnam, Mongolia and Nepal, while girls are trafficked out of China to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.
By Jill McGivering - BBC News - January 24, 2006.
|