How to handle problems when traveling abroad

While traveling, working, studying abroad or visiting relatives abroad, you may encounter problems such as lost passport, accident... that cannot be resolved on your own. To help you handle incidents that occur, you can contact Vietnamese representative agencies abroad as well as relevant agencies in the host country for help. 

1. Help that the Representative Office can provide:

• Issue a passport to continue your journey or issue a travel document to return home 
• Conduct consular visits if citizens request in case of arrest, detention or imprisonment 
• Visiting citizens who are suddenly sick and require emergency treatment at the hospital helps notify family and relatives 
• Help provide lists and addresses of hospitals and lawyers 
• Help contact family, relatives, and friends in the country if arrested, help hire a lawyer (on condition that you or your family bear the costs) 
• Help intervene when Vietnamese citizens are detained in inhumane conditions (tortured, beaten, sick, not given medical examination or treatment) 
• Helps find information if citizens are missing 
• Help notify family, relatives and friends in the event of a citizen's death 
• Help repatriate citizens who are sick or have accidents or bring the dead body back to their country at the expense of that person's family, relatives, and friends.

2. Help that the Representative Office cannot provide:

• Renew driver's license 
• Pay for hotels, fines or hospital bills 
• Paid citizens lost money to continue their journey 
• Advance deposit or attorney's fee 
• Send consular officials to the airport to issue passports 
• Conduct criminal investigations 
• Interfere with the judicial process or request local authorities to release arrested citizens 
• Acting in lieu of attorney 
• Act as an alternative to travel agents, health insurance or banks 
• Pay costs for search and rescue operations conducted by host country service agencies 
• Pay costs for repatriating dead bodies and remains.

3. Circumstances requiring emergency protection such as:

• Lost passport abroad
• Victims of women and children trafficking crimes
• Victims of other crimes
• Sickness or accident abroad
• Handling of citizens who die abroad
• Arrested, detained, detained, or imprisoned abroad.

4. Conditions for protection and assistance:

•  Be a Vietnamese citizen, hold a Vietnamese passport 
• For people with dual nationality when using a Vietnamese passport to go to a third country in which you are not a citizen, the Vietnam Representative Agency can also conduct consular protection for you, but mainly in a humanitarian aspect (for example, when your life or health is threatened or when you are detained or treated inhumanely). 
• Citizens enjoying refugee status abroad are not eligible for protection and assistance because they themselves have refused to receive protection and assistance from the state of which they are nationals. 

5. Contact the Representative Agency:

In case you and your family are traveling, studying abroad or visiting relatives abroad and encounter the above problems, you and your family can contact: Department for the Protection of Vietnamese Citizens and Legal Entities in the country outside, Consular Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

• Phone number: (+84) 981.84.84.84 (This is the phone number on duty for citizen protection work 24/24 hours, 7 days a week and 365 days a year). 
• Mail address: [email protected] 
• Address: No. 40, Tran Phu Street, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi.