Laos · People
The Mekong Corridor
Not For Sale’s people work in Laos launched in 2025 as a program country. Laos sits at the center of the Mekong trafficking corridor, with illegal rare earth mining expanding rapidly in the northeast, including in protected areas, and cyber-scam slavery compounds drawing trafficked people from across the region.
What We Found
Illegal rare earth operations in Laos now dwarf legal mines, with unregulated waste threatening river basins feeding into Vietnam and Cambodia. The ecocide is direct: as local land and water are damaged, communities are pushed into mine labor or migration into opaque regional job markets where trafficking risk is high.
Not For Sale’s presence in Laos connects directly to the Thailand program through the Golden Triangle region and to Vietnam through the Mekong system, a corridor where environmental destruction and forced labor are two faces of the same crisis.
What We Are Building
Not For Sale is establishing survivor support and prevention programs with local partners in the communities most affected by recruitment, mining displacement, and trafficking. Impact figures are being gathered as the programme develops.
