Indigenous peoples are in jeopardy throughout the world due to the actions – and inactions – of dominant cultures.  Although each one is different, tribal groups face a common set of problems that threaten their traditional way of life.  They have endured many hardships, including persecution, loss of land, and policies designed to assimilate them into national culture.  Vietnam is home to diverse tribes living in the country's Central Highlands region. In addition to their status as ethnic minorities, many are also religious minorities, with a significant number practicing Christianity.

While Vietnam’s economy has undergone spectacular growth in recent years, the tribes of the Central Highlands have continued to suffer from extreme poverty.  Among Vietnam’s ethnic minorities, 75 percent are living below the poverty line.  In the words of Muhammed Yunus, Nobel Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, “Poverty is the absence of all human rights.”

Based on needs assessments of Highlands provinces, as well as reports from the organization’s local project partners, LCHR has found a lack of basic services and provisions for survival.  This area is sustained by subsistence agriculture, and villagers report that food insecurity, overall deprivation and starvation are their greatest fears.  Heads of families say they have as many as ten children to ensure the survival of just three.  They urgently need aid in the form of basic medical, food, and other critical supplies.  In addition, they have requested assistance in learning improved cultivation techniques to make better use of their scare natural resources. 

LCHR has developed a pilot project to deliver materials and information essential to the Highlanders’ continued survival.  Direct humanitarian assistance is augmented by a microenterprise component to tangibly raise the standard of living.  Women and their children are the primary beneficiaries of program activities, an emphasis appropriate to the matriarchal-matrilineal nature of their society and culture. 

Through its on-the-ground activities, LCHR has forged ties with local partners including women’s unions in the Central Highlands. 

LCHR President Kathryn Cameron Porter traveled to the Central Highlands to learn more about the plight of the region’s indigenous people. Click here to read Ms. Porter's report on the trip.  A follow up mission was carried out by LCHR in May 2007.

LCHR continues work on its book profiling the indigenous peoples of the Highlands tribes.  This planned photo documentary, which takes a regional approach by examining six tribes in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, shows both the unique cultural traditions and the disappearing lifestyle of these tribes due to loss of land, pressure to assimilate, and other stressors.

Did you know?
In order to increase profits, large agricultural corporations in Southeast Asia are using a method known as monoculture, destroying parts of the highly diverse rainforest and planting groves of a single species of tree (normally pulp, rubber, or coffee trees in this region).  Corporations refer to the monoculture groves as forests, but they are tree farms.  The “environmentally friendly” aspect is based on the monocultures capturing carbon dioxide, but with fires and flooding, carbon dioxide is released anyway, on top of the increased emissions from industry.  This has given way to increased pollution by factories that cut down natural forests and turn them into monocultures.  Monocultures are destroying not only biodiversity in the Highlands, but also the way of life for the indigenous peoples who have survived because of biodiversity.