In 2023, Hoàng Thị Minh Hồng, a well-known climate champion who founded a now defunct non-profit environmental organization Change, based in Ho Chi Minh City, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for tax evasion. The charge was widely considered by many rights groups at home and abroad to be trumped-up. Just like what had happened to other human rights defenders, her trial was both hasty and closed.
Of course, the news on Vietnam’s highly-censored domestic media was in unison: the party-state cared about environmental issues and justly punished those in violation of law, and the narrative of politically motivated arrests of environmentalists was nothing but fake news. In response to international condemnation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sounded defensive, stressing that the arrests of activists like Hoàng had little to do with their environmental work.
“We completely reject false information with bad intentions about Vietnam’s war and crime prevention work as well as Vietnam’s foreign relations,” a ministry spokesperson told reporters. “We all know that information about this incident has been released. Police provided [information] to the press. These are all cases of violations of Vietnamese law and have been investigated, prosecuted and tried in accordance with the provisions of Vietnamese law.”
A year later, Hoàng was silently set free, two years ahead of the end of her sentence, presumably due to the Vietnamese president’s trip to the United States in September 2024. By the time this article was written, Hoàng had arrived in the U.S. with her husband and son to seek asylum — a last resort for many Vietnamese human rights activists, given the negative impact on both normal life and their activism.
However, the recent release of several prominent environmentalists who had been arrested does not signal openness to civil society participation in Vietnam’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), an agreement Vietnam concluded with international partners, including the EU, the U.S., and the U.K. to meet net-zero emission targets by 2050. In addition, despite Vietnam’s seemingly inclusive and participatory slogan – “People know, people discuss, people do, and people monitor” – both overt and covert top-down methods are in place to deter public participation in the energy transition in particular and in broader environmental movements that might potentially threaten the single-party regime. With the power sector heavily reliant on coal, Vietnam, already the second largest coal producer in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, is also poised to be one of the top five global coal importers for the first time to meet its surging energy demand and struggling grid development.
Vietnam’s Civil Society Being Squeezed
Two prominent climate activists who had been key to the JETP – Đặng Đình Bách, founder and director of the nonprofit organization Law and Policy of Sustainable Development (LPSD) and Ngô Thị Tố Nhiên, executive director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition Social Enterprise (VIETSE) – as well as many low-profile activists such as Nguyễn Đức Hùng are still in prison.
In August, in a closely held and hasty trial, Ngô Thị Tố Nhiên was sentenced to three and a half years for misappropriation of state documents. She has not been released despite international condemnation.
Mai Phan Lợi, chairman of the Scientific Council of the Center for Media in Educating Community (MEC), was freed ahead of schedule just prior to U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September 2023, which saw the United States and Vietnam upgrade their bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Nguỵ Thị Khanh, founder of GREENID, winner of the 2018 Goldman Environmental award, was granted release five months earlier than scheduled.
Their sudden and early release was met with complete silence from the domestic media. There was no official acknowledgement that the charges against them were concocted, no apology for the accused, and no agenda for righting the wrong or facilitating civil society actors. These activists were not officially acquitted, leaving their legal status unclear. Consequently, their organizations either ceased operations or shifted direction due to the shrinking civic space in Vietnam. According to several sources who worked under these leaders, all the relevant projects came to a halt.
The pattern of releasing semi-independent environmentalists before high-profile diplomatic events, particularly with Western nations, mirrors past actions involving human rights activists. Meanwhile, more outspoken or lesser-known climate activists (who have less connections to international donors) continue to face intimidation or imprisonment.
Environmental lawyer Đặng Đình Bách, who was also convicted on tax evasion charges in 2021, has repeatedly conducted hunger strikes behind prison bars to protest the treatment of prisoners. He is demanding the abolition of solitary confinement, allowing prisoners time outdoors for exercise and social contact, ensuring electrical safety, permitting the exchange of books and adequate lighting for reading, and ensuring contact and communication with family.
Vietnam, a current member of the Human Rights Council, ranks below average on citizens’ safety from the state (which includes the right to freedom from arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment, forced disappearance, execution, or extrajudicial killing), according to Human Rights Measurement Index, which tracks countries’ human rights performance across the globe.
Ironically, the country’s human rights record went downhill after Vietnam became a member of the Human Rights Council for the second time for the 2023-2025 term. To Guneet Kaur – the Environmental Defender Campaign Coordinator for International Rivers, a nonprofit, nongovernmental human rights organization headquartered in California – the recent spate of persecution against environmental defenders, climate leaders, and energy experts in Vietnam reflects a crackdown on transparency, accountability, and public participation in the process of the Just Energy Transition Partnership.
“Instead of using the JETP as an opportunity for building a participatory, collaborative framework for fighting the climate crisis, donor governments and institutional stakeholders in the JETP are enabling serious human rights harms by the Vietnam government,” said Kaur.
The concept of justice in Vietnam’s Just Energy Transition Plan appears selective. In her 2023 research paper, “Vietnam’s JETP Agreement: Accelerating the Energy Transition in a Just Way?” Dr. Julia Behrens stressed the top-down selectiveness of justice in the party-state’s framing.
The “just” aspect of the JETP might be achieved through efforts to ensure the reskilling of workers and the creation of more decent jobs. However, true justice falters when it comes to involving semi-independent NGOs and independent media in shaping energy policies. The oppressive political climate in Vietnam restricts civil society actors from meaningfully participating in this process.
“There is also a risk that the JETP signed with Vietnam, with its limited approach to justice, could set a lower standard for IPG’s [the International Partnership Group’s] negotiations with other countries,” Behrens wrote in the article.
Walking Back Progressive Laws
The 2013 Constitution of Vietnam clearly stated in its Article 43: “Everyone has the right to live in a clean environment and has the obligation to protect the environment.”
Article 5 of the amended 2020 Law on Environmental Protection says that the state encourages and facilitates the involvement of agencies, organizations, residential communities, households, and individuals in the performance, inspection and supervision of environmental protection activities.
Despite notable legislative advancements in environmental rights protection, such as those seen in the 2020 law, Vietnam has regressed in certain aspects.
While the updated Law on Environmental Protection acknowledges the role of non-state actors in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, practical implementation falls short. Yet, Decree No.8/ 2022/NĐCP, a guiding document and elaboration of the 2020 law, limits EIA consultation to specific state agencies, excluding broader civil society engagement. This restricted scope undermines the intended inclusivity of the EIA process.
Non-profit organizations in Vietnam – including environmental protection groups – have long resorted to self-censorship to survive and sustain.
A human rights officer at a regional organization says that her colleagues in the Vietnam office have increasingly hesitated to organize events that the government might deem politically sensitive. “It is very hard to work with Vietnam right now,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous.
“The political declaration accompanying the JETP explicitly stated the necessity of regular consultations with stakeholders, including the media and NGOs, to ensure broad social consensus and a just transition,” says Dr. Gvantsa Gverdtsiteli, researcher at Roskilde University, Denmark. “This indicates that the donor community has made an effort to incorporate stakeholder participation as a safeguard within the agreement. Other international donors and financial institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, also have policies concerning environmental and social safeguards, which include commitments to public participation and consultations with civil society.”
Donors’ Limited Support
It has been increasingly difficult for donors to support civil society actors in Vietnam given the shrinking civic space and diminished tolerance for even semi-independent NGOs.
According to Dr. Gverdtsiteli, donors might have some limited powers to change the game.
“At a minimum, donors can issue public statements expressing concern about the ongoing arrests and detentions of climate defenders in Vietnam,” said Gverdtsiteli. “Nevertheless, such statements related to the JETP have yet to lead to any changes in cooperation with the Vietnamese government. Donors often require prior government approval to invite stakeholders to policy-related discussions and roundtables, which can constrain the extent to which participants are able to critique government policies. In interviews with experts – including informal international groups, academics, independent Vietnamese activists – the spotlight is on what international donors should observe in Vietnam’s JETP journey, not how Vietnam’s approach can be made more just.”
As an additional step, she says, “Financial support for the initiatives like JETP could be made contingent upon strict adherence to donors’ safeguard policies. Therefore, donors should incorporate minimum standards for civil society engagement in their agreements and investment plans, as well as do more to strengthen the institutional capacity of those national governance bodies responsible for decision-making,”
Gverdtsiteli noted that donor organizations might be hesitant to impose rigorous conditions on their development assistance, and the issue of conditionality can be divisive within academic circles.
“Ultimately, the potential for these measures to effect change in government policies towards environmental experts and activists will depend on broader internal and external political dynamics,” she said.
However, continued international advocacy is still vital to long-term change.
According to Professor Daniela Sicurellim professor of political science at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of University of Trento, Italy, while EU trade deals include human rights, EU member states often resist putting pressure or imposing norms on partners, since outright debates on sensitive issues might jeopardize trade partnerships.
In particular, the EU was able to promote a human rights clause in the 1995 EU-Vietnam framework agreement, despite the initial opposition of its counterpart. Since 2016, human rights has been a must in free trade agreements with any EU partner.
“Trade is the first step to cooperation, while human rights is secondary. Trade negotiations provide space for rights dialogues,” Sicurelli said. “In the long term trade relations could bring partners in line with international norms.”