Where we work

CECI started operating in Vietnam in 1991. The country had just opened up to international aid with a view to furthering the integration of local communities into the market and increasing their agricultural incomes. Since that time, CECI has provided technical support and sent Canadian and Australian volunteers to support the government and NGO partners in their local development efforts.

In addition, CECI has secured funding from CIDA, USAID, the European Union, and the Asian Development Bank to support our partners’ development priorities.

We are now gearing our programming towards improving the livelihoods of mountain ethnic minority communities, who have benefited less from the development that has enabled the majority of Vietnamese to emerge from poverty in the last two decades.

After CECI responded to flooding in the central provinces of the Hue region in 1999, our partners asked us to continue our support for the development and implementation of community approaches to disaster mitigation. CECI has successfully introduced several innovative approaches to participatory planning for disaster risk reduction with a view to enabling the poor to better protect their health and property in the event of natural disasters.

Context

These last twenty years have seen Vietnam make great strides towards poverty reduction:

• GDP has grown at 7% annually since 2001, such that poverty has dropped down to its current level of 28%;
• Vietnam ranks 101^st out of 162 countries on the UN Human Development Index.

Despite these achievements, growth has not benefited everyone equally; among those largely excluded are the populations of mountainous and/or remote areas. The country must rise to the challenge of unequal distribution of the benefits of economic growth between:

• rural and urban areas;
• the different regions of the country: levels of poverty range up to 60–80% in the northern mountains, the central highlands, and the Mekong delta. Ethnic minorities have a much higher incidence of extreme poverty.

Despite advances on protection of women’s rights and despite women’s active participation in the economy, much remains to be done on overcoming gender-based inequality in Vietnam. Women still do an excessive share of the work, yet they face hurdles in gaining access to land, capital, training, and legal and social services.

As a coastal country, Vietnam is vulnerable to natural disasters, which hinder its sustained efforts to reduce poverty. The proportion of the population (of 80 million) living in regions exposed to water-related disasters is approximately 70%, and low-income households are most likely to be located in disaster-prone areas. Furthermore, losses caused by natural disasters are known to be one of the prime determinants of poverty.

Challenges

• maintain a good pace of economic growth and poverty reduction while ensuring the fair distribution of economic benefits;
• implement and/or strengthen civic participation in political life;
• create jobs in order to keep pace with demographic growth;
• level inequalities through targeted poverty reduction measures;
• support social development by improving health and education services, enhancing gender equality, and striving for social inclusion;
• protect the environment;
• improve governance, transparency, and responsibility in order to provide an adequate and effective response to the above-mentioned challenges;
• mitigate the economic impact of disease outbreaks such as SARS and avian flu.