World Vision Vietnam holds workshop to combat child labour
The Vietnamese office of the international child-focused agency World Vision on August 18 held a workshop in Hanoi to kick off its Against Child Exploitation (ACE) project in the country.
Funded by the US Department of Labour, the US$2.4 million project aims to strengthen the capacity of the Vietnamese Government to address Worse Forms of Child Labour (WFCL), including Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (OSEC), and violations of acceptable working conditions.
It is set to run in Dien Bien, Da Nang and Quang Nam from November 2021 to September 2024.
To achieve its aim, five main groups of interventions have been designed, including awareness raising to increase community knowledge on services available services for children engaged in WFCL; capacity building activities for members of child protection committees, social workers and service providers; community engagement activities; and partnership promotions to detect, remove, and respond to OSEC.
Rafiq Mangi, ACE Project Deputy Director at World Vision Vietnam, said the project contributes to Vietnam's commitment to ending child labour in line with the Durban Call to Action.
In the past few years, Vietnam has made significant strides in the fight against child labour by developing a strong legal framework aligned with international labour standards and carrying out a number of programmes and projects to counter the issue nationally and locally. However, it still persists in the country, especially in the informal sector of the economy
According to the 2018 Vietnam National Child Labour Survey, 1,031,944 children aged 5 to 17 were engaged in child labour, of which 20.1% worked 40 hours per week or more and 50.4% were involved in hazardous work.