2007 6 11 Người DTTS bản địa ở Việt Namtrường hợp Mã Liềng (bản tiếng Anh) indigenous peoples in vietnam malieng case

Indigenous Peoples in Vietnam
(Case study of Ma Lieng minority group in Ke village, Lam Hoa commune,
Tuyen Hoa district, Quang Binh province, Vietnam)
Written by: Pham Van Dung

Part I. General Information of Indigenous Peoples in Vietnam
1.

Position of indigenous peoples in Vietnam

54 ethnic groups are officially recognized in Vietnam, of which Kinh majority
counts for 85 percent and 53 other minority groups 15 percent. Most of minority
peoples live in mountainous remote areas representing three fourths of Vietnam’s
total area of 331,100 km2. Ethnic minority peoples keep a very important role to
protect watershed forest, where they create evolution with their own wisdoms for
long time.
While such ethnic group as Muong has been living in Vietnam as long time as
majority Kinh group, some such ethnic groups as Mong, Thai, Dao have migrated
into and around Northern Vietnam since 300 to 400 years ago. Southwards
migration and migration from lowland to highland have been happening in Vietnam
strongly in 20th century. During 1991 to 2005 period, 130,000 households migrated
to Central highland provinces. However the amount of migration reduced sharply
from 47,000 during 1996-2000 periods down to 4,600 during 2001-2005.
According to Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), difficult living
condition (shortage of water and other facilities), shortage of land, environmental
changes (landslide, land degradation) are the main causes of migration.
In comparison to Kinh majority’s lowland- and midland-dominated areas, the
mountainous areas remain higher percentage of poverty, more difficulty of
information access and poorer infrastructure. In many areas, minority people face
shortage of cultivating land, on the other hand, shortage of rights to decide on
allocated land as the land user because of top-down planning. According to

National General Statistics, in 2004, monthly income per person in Northwest
mountainous region is VND 265,690 compare to that in Northern Red River Delta’s
VND 488,180 and. The relevant figure comparison in the Southern Vietnam is:
VND 390,180 against VND 832,970 for Central Highland and Northeast of
Southern Vietnam respectively. Government report of May, 2007 released that
there are 85,000 households or 383,000 people suffering from hunger, the most of
them live in mountainous areas of Northeast, Northwest and North of Central
Vietnam.

2.

Recent national policy and developments on indigenous peoples

The Constitution of Vietnam provides in Article 5 that:

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“The State carries out a policy of equality, solidarity and mutual assistance among all
nationalities, and forbids all acts of national discrimination and division.
Every nationality has the right to use its own language and system of writing, to
preserve its national identity, and to promote its fine customs, habits, traditions and
culture”.

Land Law 2003, for the first time, recognizes land using actor for village-level
community sharing similar culture, customs or lineage. However, land is provided
as the ownership of entire people, and the state is the representative for the
owner.
Under laws, there are some noteworthy Prime Minister’s decisions relating to
minority peoples’ land rights and development:

Decision 132/2002/QĐ-TTg dated October 8th, 2002 on solution of cultivated land
and residential land for local minority people in Central Highland. The minimum
area of allocated land per household is 1 ha of slope swiden land or 0.5 ha of
yearly-one-crop wet rice or 0.3 ha of yearly-two-crop wet rice. Each shall allocate
forest land to households in case of no available cultivated land. The land users
shall direct manage and use land and shall not be allowed to transfer or mortgage
allocated land within 10 years. In case of violation, the land shall be taken back by
the state without any compensation.
Decision 134/2004/QD-TTg dated July 20th, 2004 on policy of assisting poor
difficult ethnic minority households with cultivated land, residential land, houses
and fresh water. The minimum area of allocated land per household is 0.5 ha of
slope swiden land or 0.25 ha of one-crop-annum wet rice or 0.15 ha of two-cropannum wet rice. The poor ethnic people with bad houses shall be assisted of VND
5 million from central budget plus other sources of assistance to build new house.
Local people can access forest to take wood for their house improvement
according to specific provincial regulations. Central budget assist an equivalence
of 0.5 ton of cement or VND 300,000 per household. Assistance of 100% and 50%
expenditure for common fresh water system shall be offered from central budget to
community, which consists of more than 50% and 20-50% of ethnic minority
people respectively.
Decision 146/2005/QD-TTg dated June 15th, 2005 on taking land back from state
farms and state forest enterprises to redistribute to poor ethnic minority
households. The receivers should use land according to the laws and can get
yields from existed trees on the reallocated land. They have to use land according
to state planning and cannot legally transfer land within 10 years after the date of
reallocation. If they are not in need of land usage, the state will take land back
without compensation.
Decision 304/2005/QD-TTg dated November 23rd, 2005 on piloting models of
forest allocation, contract to local ethnic minorities’ village-level community and
households in the Central Highland for forest protection. The allocated forest
receiver shall gain entire yields from the forest. The forest contractor shall receive

VND 50,000 per hectare annually. The forest users and contractors shall be
obliged to protect forest according to the laws to fulfill obligations according to the
contract.
Decision No. 18/2007/QD-TTg, dated February, 5th, 2007, by the Prime Minister to
enclose “Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy for Period 2006 – 2020” gave

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priority for using forest extension agents belonging to ethnic minority groups in
remote, isolated areas. Other attentions are paid to ethnic groups: Firstly, quickly
develop voluntary forestry extension organizations for the communes and villages,
particularly in remote, isolated areas. Secondly, focus on training and forestry
extension activities for the poor, particularly ethnic minorities and women, so that
they are able to generate stable incomes from diversification of crops and
livestock. Thirdly, pay special attention to training for ethnic minority youth and
forestry staff in remote, isolated areas. Fourthly, create favorable conditions to
attract young researchers, women and ethnic minority peoples to be involved in
scientific research and teaching.

3.

Vietnam and the Outside World

Vietnam has started its formal integration since the event of its access to WTO in
November, 2006. While concerning budget investment to improve material life of
ethnic groups, land management decentralization and reallocation for the landless
remained so slow in reality compared to the will in related legal document. The
government is not interested in opening up forum of encouraging minorities’
ancestor domain.

Vietnam’s entering into the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) would be hardly effective in this situation, because of shortage of local
ethnic people’s ownership, participation and interest in very large portion of forest,
which are still under management of ineffective state forest enterprises and
protected forest management boards.

4.

IP Non-Government Organizations and their alliances in Vietnam

Please see the attached case study of Ma Lieng group, which may somehow
depict one of the Vietnamese NGOs efforts although it is not popular and
representable for every relation between NGOs and ethnic minority people.

5.

IP's, poverty alleviation and environmental protection: links and
connections

During the last 40 years, Vietnamese government has launched different
programmes, which affected to minority peoples and their land, natural resources.
Resettlement programme initiated since the early 1960s and existed to 1990s, to
resettle lowlanders to mountainous areas and stabilize the lives of both resettled
and local people. Since early 1990s there were big government programmes
focusing on improvement of ethnic minority living condition and protect
environment in the area. Programme 327 started in 1993, aimed at plantation on
bare hills. Programme 661, as continuation of Programme 327, focused on
plantation on 5 million hectares of forest, which started since 1998. Other
noteworthy development programmes are Programme 135, which focused on
infrastructure in remote area, or Programme 134, which aims at assisting poor

difficult ethnic minority households with cultivated land, residential land, houses
and fresh water.

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Through those programmes, the government introduced concept of land rights,
land boundary, forest contract, that made local ethnic people confused. Each
ethnic people have founded their own customary laws and concept relating to land
and forest. Base on this they have been living in harmonious environment for
centuries and could solve disputes within and between community by their own
norms and customs. That is rationale for confuse and even conflicts if
governmental imposing laws, regulations do not thoroughly learn, respect and try
to integrate into local values, customary laws. For instance, the state forest
enterprises’ introduction of forest land contract, which offer people with VND
50,000 (approximately US$ 4 that time) to protect one hectare of forest per year,
but they simultaneously concieve people as employee and take them out of their
traditional ownership of forest land. By this way, forest enterprises play tragic and
magic game to claim their legal rights over the inherent land of local people. This
type of project favour giving-and-receiving manner rather than encouraging target
groups to actively find and solve problems by themselves. By causing dependency
to the people, this approach does not make any contribution to sustainable
development, of which people should become users of natural resources and
owners of development process.
Besides government programmes, different international programmes were
implemented since early 1990s. With large scale and big fund, the World Bank
(WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations agencies (UNDP, UNICEF,
FAO) and other governmental agreement (such as Vietnam-German cooperation –
GTZ, Vietnam-Japan cooperation) invested in improvement of infrastructure, living
conditions and partially in reforestation, which also affect minority peoples. They

are welcomed by the government because of large amount of money, their great
pro-government objectives of fighting poverty, and close relationship with
authorities. Since the close relationship to the government, they hardly avoid
bureaucratic or top-down approach to poor people. To ease the work as well as
procedures at localities, they cooperate with so-called mass organizations
(provincial or district women unions, youth unions, farmer associations) to carry
out projects. In this situation, who can assure the proclaimed ‘bottom-up’ approach
of those projects wherever the implementation agencies are inherently familiar to
top-down approach? A popular example from one of this type of projects was that,
the project managers agreed with local authorities that, they only allocate forest
land to a certain household, who follow the project planning of cutting down all
recovering forest for planting mono crop of pine trees. No other way, villagers had
to cut down trees otherwise they would not have chance to receive forest land.
This type of actions undermined ethnic people’s local knowledge of cultivation
while bothering local people’s link with the forest as well as their practice of
traditional customs.
On the other hand, international and local NGOs tried to introduce bottom-up
approach, which was very new in Vietnam, and firstly precautious by the
government because of its inconsistent to that of the government’s top-down
approach. Vietnamese NGOs initially, known as science technology organizations
bloomed up during 1990s. However, many of them kindly follow state-like
organizations to avoid such so-called ‘sensitive’ issues as indigenous land rights.
Only a few NGOs committed and challenged with this issue. At the beginning time,
those NGOs were suspected and disturbed by some authorities. Then they gained
more and more understandings and support from open-minded officials, scientists

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because of their transparent objectives and engagement for grassroots

democracy, social equality and development. Although success and lessons from
land allocation to ethnic poor people assisted by challenged progressive NGOs
could not be replicated by all related organizations, but they partially influenced
radical changes of legislation. Derive from those consistent NGOs’ works, the
recognition of community as one of subject to land user, the equal rights of both
wife’s and husband’s name on land certificate are good examples for legislative
reform.

Part 2. Case study of Ma Lieng ethnic group in Ke village,
Lam Hoa commune, Tuyen Hoa district, Quang Binh
province, Vietnam
1. Brief introduction of
Ma Lieng ethnic
group
The Ma Lieng is formally
recognized as Chut minority
group. The reason is that,
the government combined
Ma Lieng and four other
groups of Ruc, Sach, May,
Arem into one officially
group, which is called Chut.
However, those groups do
not share the same
language, identity, cultural
values or customs. The
people of each group
recognize themselves into
their own specific ethnic
group. They only repeat the

name of Chut when contact
to outsiders formally.

Ma Lieng
area

The Ma Lieng belongs to
Viet-Muong language family.
This ethnic group consists of
approximately 1,000 people
living in 7 villages in
provinces of Quang Binh
and Ha Tinh, central of Vietnam.

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Ma Lieng population of 2004, September (according to SPERI1 research)
#

Village

Households

Residents

Location

1.

Lom

71

447 Dan Hoa commune, Minh Hoa district,
Quang Binh province

2.

Rao Tre

22

116

3.

Ke

35

139 Lam Hoa commune, Tuyen Hoa district,
Quang Binh province

4.

Chuoi

25

99 As above

5.

Cao

20

94 As above

6.

Ca Xen

23

92 Thanh Hoa commune, Tuyen Hoa
district, Quang Binh province

7.

Bach Tai

10

41 As above

Total

206

1,028

While facing many difficulties, Ma Lieng people have been keeping their own
traditional values, customs for generations, which can specify them from people of
other ethnic groups. However side effects of free trading and other outside
influence challenge the strengths and maintenance of community spirits of Ma
Lieng people as well as other ethnic groups in Vietnam.

2. Case of Ma Lieng in Ke village, Lam Hoa commune, Tuyen
Hoa district, Quang Binh province
2.1. Situation of Ke village before 2003
2.1.1. Transition process
Ma Lieng people traditionally practiced swidden cultivation on slope land. By that
way Ma Lieng people used to live with the forest in harmony. Since 1993, Ke
villagers settled permanently at the current area at the effort of resettlement
programme’s stabilization of ethnic people’s life. Since then they gradually gave up
and entirely stopped traditional cultivation due to the government policy on “stop
shifting cultivation”.
The community has been isolated in terms of geographical location, educational
system, access to information particularly policies frame and implementing
1

SPERI: Social Policy Ecology Institute, an independent research institute established in Vietnam,
www.dolame.org.

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process, and infrastructure. On the other hand, different government programmes

did not pay enough attention to learn and understand the community’s cultural
values. Therefore their staff, especially those of resettlement’s unrespected
behaviour and attitude have led to the loss of trust and confidence of Ma Lieng
towards their local authorities.
At the beginning of sedentary cultivation, Ke villagers faced various difficulties.
They suffered from hunger because they could not get used to requirement of new
cultivation techniques. They had to go to forest to take non-timber products just to
survive. The Ma Lieng difficulties created opportunities for Kinh free traders to take
advantages to sell rice and necessities at high price while products from Ma Lieng
people remained low price. Besides some traders offered Ma Lieng youths with
wine, cigarettes, which caused drunk and conflicts within and between Ma Lieng
community and outsiders.
As a result, Ma Lieng people found it so hard to recover community spirits as well
as to relief and escape from growing loan.
The government introduced a programme of helping poor ethnic people to improve
their living, especially housing condition since 2003. Decision 134/2004/QD-TTg
legalized this programme, which made worrisom and confuse to both community
and state implement staff. The implementing department could not find better
solutions for improvement of approaches of previous resettlement programme,
which had been evaluated as unsuccessful and ineffective. If they continue topdown plan and implementation, they would be repeatedly observe their built
houses unsuitable and useless to villagers. On the other hand, villagers have to
choose either to refuse state-imposed houses, go back to forest and keep
community spirits or to stay at the offered unfamiliar house and gradually forget
and lose their own identity.
With regards to the dilemma, as a developmental organization, SPERI should play
an active role to advice for preservation of Ma Lieng human-ecology system
simultaneously contribute to building up suitable approach to such vulnerable
community. Therefore, SPERI introduced the term Ngoi hoa2 (housing style) to
imply this approach.
2.1.2. Leadership crisis

As many other ethnic peoples, Ma Lieng people traditionally respect ong pau or
gia lang (village elder), who lead, advice the villagers in both material and spiritual
aspects of life. Village elder traditionally plays an important role in advising
villagers, makes final decision on settlement of a certain village, finds location of a
house, represents entire villagers to contact to superpower holy spirits in
community actions, ceremonies, especially worshipping.
Ke villagers experienced traditional leadership crisis, and the hardest happened
during 2001 to 2003. This broke inherent community atmosphere, which was
indicated by mutual support, various such common activities as housing
ceremonies, worshipping forest spirits lead by village elder. Nice behaviour
2

Ngoi hoa (housing style) refers to holistic activities for improvement of accommodation condition, while
keep traditional Ma Lieng house style and therefore their own cultural values by their own contribution to
build houses.

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between elder and villagers, between the old and youths, men and women was
confused. Traditional respect towards elders is eroded. One of the elders
complained that, “Our community value shall be destroyed by market value… How
painful I feel when I sit here next to the window but am unable to control my
grandchildren”.
Traditional elder’s role was vulnerably undermined due to the challenge from the
boost of outside influence during the period transferring from traditional to
sedentary cultivation. In this situation, no one amongst the elders can fully meet
requirement and act as actual inherent traditional village elder. If the crisis exist for
a long time, young generation will not gain any opportunities to learn and practice
Ma Lieng customs, belief, values through community ceremonies or common

activities, therefore Ma Lieng group may face threat of cultural and spiritual
disappear although their physical persons remain and develop.

2.2. Approach to Ngoi hoa programme
2.2.1. Learn and encourage strength of cultural values
SPERI tried to avoid any subjective view to development plan by learning ethnic
people prior to every intervention. The villagers would never openly talk to those,
who do not show respect to them or who impose things to them. They only feel
free to tell their belief, values, customary laws, and taboo to trusted close friends.
Luckily, at that moment SPERI had built quite good relationship and got friendly
image towards villagers.
SPERI staff learnt that, Ma Lieng house do not only consist of roofing or material
meaning, but essentially, it requires and retains Ma Lieng belief, values and
thereon, identity. A Ma Lieng house-on-pillar should consist of a sacred room, a
sacred pillar for ancestors’ spirits, and a sacred window for specific transferring
death body out of the house, pillar for son-in-law and pillar for daughter-in-law. To
complete a house, a family must follow such ceremonies as choosing and
breaking land, starting of wood selection, setting up house, setting fire and
entering new house. That reflects strong link between human and their nature, in
which human must respect nature’s holy spirits for any of resource utility, hence
they should care for land and forest for sustainable harmonious life.
Ma Lieng people define good and bad days for events of starting any crucial work.
They do not accept trees without top, or being covered by clockwise rope-trees for
their house pillars. Those customs relate strongly to belief, customary laws of the
people as well as their identity and community spirits. Therefore, they would feel a
house cold, uninspired and meaningless if building process does not follow their
customs. That partially answers to the fact that Ma Lieng and other similar
vulnerable minority people do not care for and easily give up supported houses,
which are designed and built by outsiders.
2.2.2. The role of community traditional leadership

Through learning community, SPERI understood that development of Ma Lieng
group must contain promotion of their own identity, of which traditional leadership

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should be encouraged. However, no one could be sure Ke villagers to vote and
adopt one person becoming a new elder. To deal with this dilemma, SPERI
advisor facilitated villagers to discuss and vote leaders of every clan, who were
experienced elders. Those elders came together to establish a new form, known
as hoi dong gia lang (elders’ council), as the reform of traditional leadership. Since
the representatives for every clan, elders’ council reflects clan’s or every member’s
thinking, feeling, willing to engage into community activities. Interaction between
different clan leaders and members create good environment for every involvers to
show their wisdoms, capacity in the competition for the sake of the community.
Thanks to attention and motivation to involve in community works, villagers,
particularly elders’ council have made efforts to regenerate community
atmosphere, which used to perform strongly without outside and market impacts.
Elders’ council brought various opinions from different clans into democratic open
discussions aiming at community solutions for crisis and embarking upon Ngoi hoa
simultaneously. They gave advice to villagers, who were their children, relatives to
solve any difficulties deriving from Ngoi hoa activities. Sometimes they acted as
the judges to settle disputes between members of different Ngoi hoa implementing
groups or between villagers and outsiders. They gained further confidence and
active role in community works while SPERI field staff worked as learners,
secretaries for elders’ strategic planning and coordination. SPERI staff would be
advisor or facilitator only for community necessity, whenever the elders’ council
found it unable to fulfill their own responsibilities.
Thanks to elders’ council, Ma Lieng traditional values are encouragingly practiced.
While the eldest man became advisor for elders’ council, one of the council’s

members traditionally succeeded and played the role of spiritual leader, who is the
holder of all worships for ceremonies of every house building. During the sacrifice,
the holder (worshipper) of the ceremony would refer to all holy spirits of the
watershed areas, where their ancestors had settled. This indicates villagers’
acknowledgement of the nature, which offer them necessities for happy life. This
practice creates available opportunities for youths and children to learn to respect
and care for nature, historical move of their ancestors. Ma Lieng people therefore
gradually recover confidence and proud of their own cultural values, community
spirits, as the foundation for keeping community identity.
2.2.3. Interest groups: environment for civil society
In order to involve all members of the community, especially youths, women in
Ngoi hoa and development activities, it is necessary to develop those interest
groups for each specific target groups. While youths are interested in such groups
as wood harvesting and transporting, carpentry or house setting, women prefer to
join ground leveling, domestic affairs and services. Those groups became
implementation groups for Ngoi hoa and other development activities.
Different interest groups create free environment for villagers to choose, join,
discuss, decide, contribute, cross-check and supervise. Each group set up their
own regulation through discussion between members. Amongst the best reputable
persons, the head of the group will be chosen by members. One can become
member of a certain group, which is found the most suitable for her or him. A
member from a certain group can move to others according to the member’s wish,

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community requirement, and group’s regulations. A group should first self-control,
to suggest and implement plan, so that to suit to the whole community’s scheduled
works. Group members and their head should solve difficulties; disputes derive
from their own operation. Elders’ council only helps a group, which seems unable

to solve problems themselves.
During implementation of
Ngoi hoa, every interest
group has amended their own
regulations according to
community’s changing needs
and requirement. For
instance, at the beginning
time of Ngoi hoa, every
members of wood collecting
team should work together,
so that to regain community
spirits, community
atmosphere, which used to
be neglected that time. After
one year, this group decided
to split the group, so that to
Ma Lieng youths learn and practice carpentry
speed up the process,
techniques to set up houses themselves
simultaneously create good
competitive environment
amongst members. However, the members of new splited groups may exchange
to get better support to each others. Every group requires more and more such
contributions as food, necessities from their members to the group or community,
and reduces outside support simultaneously while the members’ income is getting
better. Therefore, members as well as the community have been gaining further
decisive roles and confidence through Ngoi hoa implementation.
2.3. Natural resources and Ma Lieng community
Before 1993 Ke villagers shift houses and therefore the whole village from an area

to another according to their cultivation circle. They define their own boundary by
acknowledging watershed areas, where their ancestors have lived. Since the
establishment of Tuyen Hoa state forestry enterprise, most of traditional boundary
of Ke village became forest land of the enterprise. They applied forest contract to
Ke villagers according to Programme 327, which did not confirm the villagers’
forest land rights. Practically Ke villagers could not access and use forest in far
areas according to their traditional boundary. On the other hand, more and more
Kinh people have been making pressure by getting into Ke forest to take wood
without the community’s consent.
During 1999-2000, SPERI conducted supporting land allocation to Ke villagers
according to their needs and suggestions. SPERI staff facilitated villagers to make
plan to clarify forest area of the whole community and division between
households, so that to transfer into mapping and land use certificates. Villagers
actively apply their own customary laws to discuss and find out solutions for
solving any disputes derived from field work of land allocation process. Because

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NGOs have not rights to decide on land allocation, SPERI helped villagers to bring
their needs to district authorities. Upon the agreement of district leaders, SPERI
coordinated between villagers and technicians from district forestry and cadastral
departments to ensure to suit villagers’ actual forest border recognition to that of
technicians. After processes of land allocation at the field and in the office, all
current 28 households and 3 community organizations (elders, youths, women)
received land certificates on 305 ha of forest land.
After receiving land certificates, Ke villagers discussed to make planning on their
residential area, rice field, crops, community forest, and community area. They
could make use of the allocated forest in Ngoi hoa programme; they harvested
trees from forest for building new houses.

So far villagers of Ke as well as other villages have been facing the pressure of
illegal forest exploitation by outsiders. This is caused by surrounding Kinh people’s
jobless and shortage of land for cultivation, weak support and weak fulfillment of
local authority, especially forest protectors to stop violation. As a small group
facing hunger simultaneously, Ma Lieng people are unable to ensure entirely their
forest user’s rights. It will become problematic to villagers if the government
evaluates land allocation programme and its beyond. Understand this problem, Ke
elders’ council are trying to contact and share their experiences to elders from
other Ma Lieng villages. They have set up network of key-persons of Ma Lieng
community. According to the network regulation, Ma Lieng elders gather monthly
to discuss problems and try to find out solutions, practical plans to solve gradually.
Hopefully, in the process of recovering community spirits, development of Ma
Lieng traditional leader network, the community’s further strengths, and hunger
eradication, Ma Lieng people will step-by-step reduce the cases of outsiders’
illegal forest exploitation.
2.4. Conclusion
The government and foreign programmes have invested a great fund to ethnic
minority people. However, they have inherently faced unanswered question of
adaptability and effectiveness. Top-down centralized way of management could
not help to ensure effective improvement of poor ethnic minority people’s living
standard, cultural identity as well as protection of forest. Good policy may not
translate into reality effectively if implementation staff do not understand, respect
and encourage target groups’ values and strengths. The policy may be distorted
that way, leading to distrust between target groups and implementing staff.
On the other hand, the bottom-up approach, which relates to learning from people,
encouraging what people have should be shared and further applied for better
quality of support for ethnic people and their natural resources. In this process,
ethnic people’s customary laws should be respected as good instruments to
protect their specific traditional cultural values. Completion of legal system and its
enforcement is necessary to clarify authority’s responsibilities, to create legal

environment for NGOs and people’s initiatives and organizations’ effective work for
the sake of sustainable and harmonious development.

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Reference

Van Nghe Dan Toc (Ethnic Literature), 2006, series of articles relating to Ma Lieng group,
issues 6 to 12
Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon (Saigon Economic Times), 2006, Special Themes of
Environment Policy and Sustainable Development
Prime Minister, 2007, Vietnam Forestry Development Strategy for Period 2006 – 2020
(Decision 18/2007/QD-TTg, dated February, 5th, 2007)
www.ethnologue.com--maps--VNMI_ETH.jpg
/>UNDP, 2004: Briefing report for Vietnam
/>AL&item_id=2056666&thth_details=1

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