The report is the result of the second round of rural poverty monitoring work in 10 monitoring sites throughout Vietnam by the two international non-governmental organisations ActionAid and Oxfam. Part of their wider post-WTO poverty monitoring initiative, it forms a longitudinal study of poverty outcomes, linked with changes in livelihoods and market access of vulnerable groups, in selected communities and cities throughout Vietnam.

The report found that unexpected risks such as volatile market prices, the world financial crisis and weather extremes exacerbated by climate change effects created negative impacts on people's lives and degraded the quality of life of the poor people at many monitoring sites.

Furthermore, shocks in 2008 exerted adverse impacts on the poor and the non-poor in different ways that have made the poverty gap picture more complex. According to the report, poor people, compared to better off households, have limited livelihood capital and less access to institutions and processes, so in many survey sites the gap between the two groups did not narrow in the last year.

Changes in gender relations in the family and community were also considered in this report round. The recently incurred risks and shocks made women suffer more as they have to shoulder the added burden to meet the family’s needs. Gender equality at community level and in the society at large cannot be fully achieved when gender equality within households is adversely impacted.

The report also found that the quality of participation of the poor has in many cases not been high. This requires special attention so that the poor and poor communities are true owners of their growth, in order to improve the effectiveness of policies, programs, and projects aiming at poverty reduction.

The report also recommends designing a model for more balanced investment between development of resources and improvement of access to institutions and processes for the poor and their communities, with a stronger focus on results and impacts; utilising indigenous knowledge as part of the livelihood strategy for the poor ethnic people.

The report suggests applying the community development approach to each village, with three pillars being community capacity building, promotion of community institutions and implementation of community-based programmes and projects, while implementing Programme 30a.

Reading the content of Report here: Synthesis report-RURAL-round2- English-Nov09.pdf

ENDS

Notes to editors:

ActionAid Vietnam has been working in the country for nearly 20 years with long-term development programmes in 19 provinces. Focused on rights-based and partnership approaches, ActionAid Vietnam works with poor and excluded groups to help them claim their rights to food, education, just and democratic governance, rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, rights of women and girls.

For more information, please visit: www.actionaid.org/vn.

Founded in 1942, Oxfam Great Britain made its first grant in Vietnam in 1955, and is now a leading global development and humanitarian organization. Oxfam GB's programmes in Vietnam range across sectors including rural livelihoods and infrastructure, basic education, disaster management, and national level social and economic policy change. Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International.