Looking Forward: Challenges to Poverty Reduction in Vietnam

Despite lots of progress, poverty reduction remains an urgent priority, and new poverty reduction strategies are needed as current approaches are losing impact. This is one of the key recommendations in a report published by Oxfam and ActionAid ahead of the mid-term Consultative Group meeting in Quang Tri early next week. The ‘Looking forward: Challenges to Poverty Reduction in Vietnam’ report updates the results of the participatory poverty monitoring in rural communities project from 2007 to 2011. This has been a difficult time for poverty reduction in Vietnam. High inflation, the global financial crisis and economic recession, natural disasters and epidemics have affected the lives of everybody in the country, particularly poor people. Nevertheless, the poverty rate continues to decline. Major government investments have provided poor people with improved infrastructure, increased economic opportunities, more non-agricultural jobs, and better housing, educational, health and agricultural extension services. 55 percent of households in the research felt that their lives have improved over the last five years. However, challenges still remain. Poverty reduction rates are uneven in rural areas. Findings from the report show that nearly two in five people in the monitoring sites do not see or are not sure of any changes while nine percent even felt that their lives had got worse in the last five years. Chronic poverty is increasingly concentrated, especially in ethnic minority areas; this is shown while comparing multidimensional poverty criteria between ethnic minority groups with the Kinh group. Despite the government’s poverty reduction efforts, findings from the monitoring sites shows alarming figures - 16 percent of families are still short of food up to nearly five months a year, one in four children under age five are malnourished, 42 percent of surveyed households still have no access to clean water, and four in five families still live without latrines or temporary latrines. A significant number of people are vulnerable to falling back into poverty due to high inflation, the global economic crisis, natural disasters and epidemics. These are the risks, old and new that Vietnam has to face in order to overcome poverty. “To recognize and tackle on-going and emerging forms of poverty and injustice, a broader understanding of poverty is needed”, said AAV’s Country Director, Hoang Phuong Thao. “Poverty is multi-dimensional and the causes and drivers of poverty are diverse and complex.” Chronic, vulnerable, temporary and near poor groups all need different approaches; targeting is critical to make public policies and investments effective. Exclusion from the opportunities of wealth creation together with a lack of voice to make better choices and claim rights, are important contributing factors. Moreover, the aspirations and needs of diverse communities, such as the different ethnic minorities, need to be better understood and appreciated. Another issue that often is overlooked is the relationship between labor migration and poverty reduction in both rural and urban areas. Findings from the report show that labor migration over the past five years has contributed greatly to rural poverty reduction. However, people who migrate for work are often discriminated against in accessing basic services; hence there should be policies to encourage and assist them in finding jobs and ensuring their safety. The report also presents a number of recommendations toward sustainable poverty reduction in Vietnam’s rural areas, particularly mountainous ethnic minority areas. Vigorous support policies are needed, including core changes to the approach, strategy and delivery of social assistance programs to be expanded to cover different segments of poor people. New innovations, such as direct cash transfers, should be piloted, with a particular focus on food insecure households and ethnic minority communities. “Payment levels need to keep pace with the overall increases in cost of living and graduation mechanisms should be in place to continue to support people as their lift themselves out of poverty,” said Oxfam’s Country Director, Andy Baker. To support farmers, agricultural extension services should be reformed, particularly in mountainous ethnic minority areas. Training approaches should be more participatory and field school based. Projects aiming at improving and changing livelihood models of the poor people should pay special attention to the needs of both women and men farmers, should consider low-cost investment models, and suitability to conditions and livelihood strategies of poor ethnic minorities. (qdnd.vn May 30)