Trafficking-related COI – Project page
Project duration: March 2025 – 29 April 2026
In 2025, consultations with legal representatives, UK charities and experts in human trafficking and modern slavery highlighted an inadequate and up-to-date Country of Origin Information (COI) on human trafficking. Building on our previous work and our collaboration with ARC Foundation which resulted in the following publicly available publications:
1. China: Loan Shark Activities, Police Protection and Corruption, and support, including mental health, to female returnee victims of trafficking, Asylos, September 2025
2. Rwanda: Trafficking, Asylos, June 2024
3. Albania: Trafficking, Asylos, April 2024
4. Vietnam: Returned Victims of Trafficking: Issues Affecting Likelihood of Re-Trafficking, Asylos and ARC Foundation, May 2020
5. Albania: Trafficked Boys and Young Men, Asylos and ARC Foundation, May 2019
Asylos launched a project that intends to address information gaps about trafficked persons who are seeking international protection, and/or referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). This new project not only presented an opportunity to:
1. Update and expand on the scope of Asylos and ARC Foundation’s 2020 report on Vietnam, which focused on ‘Returned Victims of Trafficking: Issues Affecting Likelihood of Re-Trafficking’, by producing a new country report titled ‘Human Trafficking in Vietnam: Patterns of exploitation, risk factors, and access to support’, which presents information on the conditions experienced by trafficked and re-trafficked men, women and children in Vietnam during the past five years, combining interviews with individuals with authoritative knowledge on the topic alongside excerpts from country information available in the public domain;
2. But it also provided an opportunity to develop a Principles Document to share key research insights, and;
3. Forthcoming: Training handbook and module to guide those conducting Country of Origin Information research on trafficking-related issues.
On 30 April 2026, we launched the project with a Human Trafficking Research Network (HTRN) online seminar, where we presented the key findings of our Country of Origin Information report on Vietnam.
Do you have any comments or feedback on our project? We would love to hear it! Email us at info@asylos.org
The project is part of a series of initiatives that address critical gaps in country of origin information. The generous financial support provided by the Trust for London for this project is greatly appreciated.
Post image credit: Silver Ringvee