9 minute read
Seniors challenge human trafficking
• Yusi “Christine” Mo ’21 • Chuc An “Ann” Tran ’21
DreamGirls Vietnam
Editor’s note: Academy World interviewed Chuc An “Ann” Tran ’21 and Yusi “Christine” Mo ’21 about a human trafficking prevention project.
Two years ago, Chuc An “Ann” Tran ’21 and Yusi “Christine” Mo ’21 learned of an extensive human trafficking crisis pervading their home nations, Vietnam and China. Living under destitute and patriarchal conditions, young women in Sapa, a town in the Vietnamese highlands and a major trafficking hotspot, have faced greater dangers of trafficking due to social media proliferation.
Even though COVID-19 has reduced trafficking rates in Sapa, NonGovernmental Organizations have estimated that one girl is kidnapped every 25 days.
This knowledge inspired Ann and Christine to embark upon a personal trafficking prevention project, where interviews and collaboration with ETHOS Humanitarian Association, an anti-trafficking NGO, helped them produce a digital graphic novel titled “No Way Home,” based on the experiences of a survivor. Their graphic novel has since been distributed through ETHOS’ platform and connections.
Since their graphic novel’s completion in October, Ann and Christine have expanded the scope of their student-led advocacy project, establishing and naming it DreamGirls Vietnam to reframe their mission around empowering and educating young, ethnic minority women in Vietnam. Q: What inspired you to begin DreamGirls? Christine: We began our project two summers ago when I flew to Vietnam for two weeks. Here, we reached out to multiple anti-trafficking and women’s rights NGOs. Talking with social workers, we learned that social media proliferation has endangered girls significantly as it provides a medium for traffickers to easily manipulate girls. As teenagers, we benefit from social media every day, so hearing that such a mindless aspect of our lives can endanger girls our age was shocking.
We knew that our goal was to aid prevention efforts as that was within our capabilities, given that we are only high school students and that we go to school thousands of miles away. Hence, we decided to write a digital graphic novel to raise awareness of social media’s role in trafficking. This way, our story would be accessible and engaging to those most vulnerable.
Q: Tell us about your inspiration for “No Way Home.” Ann: Once we settled on our graphic novel idea, we wanted to depict an authentic story in order to directly appeal to our target audience in Sapa and shed light on the harsh realities young women faced. Many NGOs we interviewed were very cautious about sharing their clients’ profiles. As a result, we did not have a complete story to work with until we met with ETHOS, a social enterprise in Sapa.
Through ETHOS, we learned of May, a 13-year-old survivor who ETHOS had rescued several years ago. After being abused by her father, May ran away from home. Without the protection of a guardian, May was tricked by an older male trafficker under the guise of a romantic interest and sold across the Chinese border to be a child bride.
Q: How did you begin the production process? Christine: After interviews with ETHOS and May’s little sister, we drafted our storyboard, complete with dialogue and panel designs. Then, we used the Upwork freelance platform to hire an artist to help us bring our vision to life.
From here, we meticulously edited each page through the sketching and coloring process, then followed with the translations to create two versions, one in English and one in Vietnamese. Once we had our final product, we surveyed women and young girls in Sapa in order to ensure our product was accurate and engaging. The entire production process took approximately eight months, lengthened due to the pandemic.
Q: You mentioned social media as a factor contributing to girls’ risk of being trafficked. Can you elaborate? Are there other factors? Ann: We were actually really surprised to find that social media proliferation serves as a vehicle for traffickers, who can now easily contact and coerce girls through Facebook. Many traffickers would form relationships and build trust with vulnerable girls before tricking them into traveling to border cities for dates or directly to China with lofty promises of job prospects and brighter futures. This was the case with May.
However, social media is not a root cause of trafficking. Rather, destitution, a lack of education and gender inequality lie at the heart of this crisis. Further, China’s One-Child Policy especially has created a drastic gender imbalance that has bred the market for trafficking across Southeast Asia.
Q: Can you tell us more about China’s role in creating this crisis? Christine: This was actually one of the key pieces of information that piqued our interest in human trafficking, as we were intrigued by the dynamic between our two home countries. After China’s economic reformation in the 1980s, a population boom led the government to enact the OneChild Policy.
Due to their traditional Confucian gender roles, families in China, desperate for a male heir, would abandon or abort their female children, causing a gender imbalance of approximately 40 million more males than females.
Additionally, China’s deeply-rooted view of women’s inferiority has historically perpetuated the commodification of women’s bodies. This interplay of factors have fostered China’s markets for bride and sex trafficking, which now draw women from all across Southeast Asia.
Q: In what other ways does gender inequality fuel trafficking? Ann: On Vietnam’s side, Sapa’s large H’mong population and its patriarchal society strips girls of opportunities and protection. With widespread destitution, families prioritize their sons’ education and economic status, pushing their daughters to drop out of school and work to sustain their families.
To lift economic burdens, daughters are also often sold into child marriage. Wed to men years their senior, many young women become victims of domestic abuse.
Trapped in oppressive systems without economic autonomy, many women become mesmerized by an idealized image of China, where they believe they will be granted freedom and social mobility. These women are traffickers’ prime targets.
As research has shown that children who grow up in unstable, violent households are most vulnerable to forming unhealthy relationships, these volatile conditions generate this region’s entrenched intergenerational trauma.
Q: You mentioned poverty as a root cause of trafficking. Can you elaborate? Ann: I would argue that poverty is the greatest cause of trafficking. Beyond inhibiting social mobility and autonomy for women, deprivation also pushes men to become intermediaries of trafficking. Most importantly, scarce finances are the sole reason behind Sapa’s limited educational resources. With scarce schooling opportunities, few are able to escape the cycle of poverty. It is a huge reason why Sapa itself is a trafficking hub, and not a larger city such as Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. Q: How is May’s story a reflection of the systemic problems at the heart of human trafficking? Christine: In every way. Growing up in an impoverished family, May, her mom and her siblings suffered from their opium-addicted father’s abuse. This abuse led May’s mom to flee to China and May to feel excluded at school and drop out to work at a soup kitchen. She was captured while working illegally as a child laborer.
Unlike most victims of trafficking, May was fortunately rescued years after. However, due to mental health stigma and limited resources, Sapa currently lacks psychological counseling infrastructure. Compounded with Sapa’s culture of victim blaming, May was unable to reintegrate into her unwelcoming community and is now trapped in an abusive second marriage. Q: What do you think needs to happen in order for the human trafficking crisis to cease? Ann: While prevention is vital, it is not a longterm solution to human trafficking. During an interview with Hagar International, an NGO that supports victims of trafficking and abuse, a case manager explained that solutions must encompass three categories: individual, societal and governmental.
Across these levels, comprehensive solutions must range from prioritizing women’s access to education, social service, and employment opportunities to legislative and budgetary changes that work toward dismantling gender inequality.
Finally, the Chinese and Vietnamese must collaborate despite their strife to address the issue. Today, the tension between the two nations results in staggered communication and limited cooperation in the process of rescuing victims and arresting traffickers.
Consequently, the work of retrieving girls is left to a few NGOs with licensing to cross the border, such as Blue Dragon. Additionally, rampant corruption minimizes the governments’ abilities to hold complicit officials accountable and eliminate trafficking markets.
Q: What has DreamGirls done since releasing the graphic novel? Ann: Since establishing DreamGirls officially in November, we have recruited eight more content creators and designers to our team, several of whom are friends from WMA while most are from Viets for Change, a youth advocacy organization that I am leading in Vietnam.
Together, we have crafted an expanded mission and unified aesthetic as we aim to increase our social media presence.
Most excitingly, thanks to the additional time we have had at home, Mai Khanh “Kayla” Nguyen ’21 and I, along with some of our friends, had the opportunity to travel to Sapa in March when we finally got to meet the founders of ETHOS in person and film five short films.
• H’mong girls in Sapa, Vietnam.
Q: Tell us more about your trip. Ann: The objective of our trip was to film minidocumentaries centered on the personal stories of four extraordinary H’mong women in order to shed light on greater systemic problems that impact ethnic minorities.
Two young girls told us of their experiences with education inequality and being street vendors, while two mothers shared the heartbreak of having loved ones trafficked. Actually, two of these women are May’s sisters, Cha and My.
While conducting our interviews, we got the chance to visit a village, harvest our own vegetables, cook on a fire pit and share a meal with a H’mong family. Next, we assisted one of ETHOS’ health and hygiene workshops for ethnic children, many of whom had never been taught to use soap or a toothbrush. We also did a lot of hiking.
We were able to fully immerse ourselves in Sapa’s culture and learn of incredible and empowering, but harrowing, stories that we are so excited to share. It was truly one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had.
Q: Where is DreamGirls going from here? Ann: Right now, we are focused on editing and piecing together our films. This has been challenging as our members live everywhere from Hanoi to Osaka, and none of us have extensive editing experience.
Additionally, we are continuing to find more robust ways to distribute our graphic novel, which thus far has been launched on our website and distributed through ETHOS. We are working with ETHOS to turn our graphic novel into activities for the trafficking awareness workshops that they hold.
Beyond our ongoing projects, we also have ideas to create virtual health, sexual education and leadership seminars in order to provide women with vital information in an accessible manner.
As this project has shaped our future aspirations, we will remain dedicated to DreamGirls’ growth with hopes to broaden our impact and inspire women in any way we can.
