TRAFFIC kicks off new consumer initiative against ivory consumption in Viet Nam
Hanoi, Viet Nam, 7th March 2019—This week the British Embassy in Viet Nam and TRAFFIC kicked off the #MakeVietnamProud campaign, an initiative to encourage Vietnamese citizens to show off their national pride by rejecting ivory products. The campaign will run throughout the month of March on Facebook and Zalo, as well as featuring some of Viet Nam’s top football players in a TV ad that will debut in April.
We’re very excited to be participating in this campaign, which offers a platform for all Vietnamese people to voice their opposition to ivory consumption. Viet Nam remains a large ivory market, but with a public that is increasingly engaged in wildlife causes, we’re hoping that will change
Sarah Ferguson, office director for TRAFFIC Viet Nam.
The campaign hopes to galvanize anti-ivory sentiment by bringing together the contributions of various NGOs that are working on combatting the ivory trade, spreading their messaging further through dedicated social media channels.
Ivory consumption remains a persistent issue in Viet Nam, with a 2017 TRAFFIC study finding more than 10,000 individual ivory items for sale both in physical markets and online.
Most of the ivory for sale in the country originates from Africa, where around 55 elephants are poached every day, totaling more than 20,000 dead per year. This large-scale killing has put the species under threat of extinction, and numbers will likely continue to decline unless demand for ivory in Asia is severely reduced.
