"Vietnamese trainees told to undergo contraception to work in Japan," 21 January 2024

Some female Vietnamese technical trainees have received contraception treatments based on instructions by organizations involved in a Japan internship program, a Kyodo News survey revealed, with the practice raising concerns that such trainees' reproductive rights were not respected...

According to a recent survey conducted via a support group for Vietnamese trainees in Japan, nine women were advised by local intermediary organizations, which gather trainee candidates and send them to Japan, to undergo contraceptive treatment. Five of them actually received such treatments, which included the use of internal birth control rings, the survey showed...

In many cases, the intermediary organizations advised Vietnamese trainees that they would be sent home if they got pregnant. The five Vietnamese trainees who underwent contraception treatment currently work in Japan, with one of them expressing in the survey that she thought she could not go to Japan without following the instruction...

There have been cases involving Vietnamese trainees in recent years in Japan. One case involved a female trainee who was arrested for abandoning her baby's body out of fear her employer would send her home if the pregnancy were discovered...

...the survey highlighted that foreign trainees' reproductive rights, which allow them to decide whether to have and raise a child, have not been taken seriously under the current system...

If training is terminated against a trainee's will due to pregnancy or childbirth, their employers and supervising organizations will be subject to disciplinary actions based on the law to protect technical intern trainees.