She is one of the 1000 women proposed fort the Nobel Peace Price 2005
She says:Giving back the confidence, self-esteem, and decision making to indigenous women and isolated communities is our path, our vision, and aspiration of all our affiliated organizations.”
Towards Ethnic Women (TEW).
Tran Thi Lanh – Viet Nam
She works for the Center for Human Ecology Study of Highlands (CHESH), and the Center for Indigenous Knowledge Research and Development (CIRD).
Watersheds play a vital role in the destiny of a nation. The 53 indigenous communities living in the watershed near the marginal borders of Vietnam are the only groups protecting the forest resources. Supporting sustainable livelihoods for these communities means increasing their awareness of building harmonious lifestyles by their own efforts and based on their own rights to natural resources. Tran Thi Lanh is a unique Vietnamese woman intellectual who has dedicated her life to caring for the vulnerable indigenous women and children who live in the watershed of the Mekong region.
Pursuant to the United Nations declaration of the World Decade for Cultural Development (1988-1997), UNESCO has provided funds for Thailand to host the Sub-Regional Workshop on the Cultural Context of Natural Resource Management. Mrs. Tran Thi Lanh made a paper presentations in the workshop named ‘Traditional Culture Values and the Mountainous Natural Resources‘.
AGENT ORANGE LEAVES DESTRUCTIVE LEGACY IN VIETNAM –
Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, the herbicide Agent Orange – sprayed by US planes during the war – is said to still affect a million victims in Vietnam today. Many of them are children born with serious deformities, as a result of their parents’ exposure to the chemical, by Tran Dinh Thanh Lam: Ben Cau (Vietnam): ‘I don’t want my son to become a public attraction,’ Doan Ngoc Thanh says angrily, waving his hands to stop a photographer from taking a picture of his 10-year-old son.
The boy has an abnormally big head for his slender body, which lies in bed most of the time. Living in a small, remote village here in Ben Cau district, Tay Ninh province in south-west Vietnam, he is one of the many victims of the destructive legacy of the herbicide Agent Orange, sprayed by US planes during the Vietnam War.
Tay Ninh shares a 240-kilometre border with Cambodia, where fierce battles took place during the war and tens of thousands of tonnes of chemicals were dropped to destroy vegetation in the jungles to flush out communist fighters.
Doan Ngoc Thanh and his wife Nguyen Thi Lanh were both former guerillas at Ben Cau. Lanh’s blood was found to have high dioxin levels, while Thanh’s skin is pockmarked with scabs and scars. He too has high levels of dioxin … (read the rest of this article on Third World Network).
linked to our presentation of Center for Human Ecology Study of Highlands CHESH – Viet Nam on December 26, 2005.
links:
a letter;
UNDP;
No Star where;
ntfp;
Intellectual Exchange Database;
selected readings in civil societa in Viet Nam;