Reducing gender-based violence in Vietnamese conservation

Capacity and Governance

Rationale

Workplace gender inequality undermines conservation's ability to achieve its key goals of  biodiversity protection and ecological stewardship, and this challenge in Vietnam may prove career limiting. In 2020, 114 wildlife conservationists, environmentalists and government officials were surveyed online about sexual harassment in the workplace.The survey revealed that five out of six participants experienced sexual harassment, in various forms, in the workplace. Our report is available HERE  

With this in mind, and in a bold attempt to tackle workplace GBV in the conservation and environmental sector, WildAct has implemented the “Reducing Gender-Based Violence in Vietnamese Conservation Sector” from Jan 2021 to Jan 2023 under the sponsorship of the USAID Rise Challenge.

The long term project is to ensure women and men are able to safely and effectively engage in wildlife conservation in Vietnam by increasing the capability of wildlife conservationists to address and prevent challenges of gender inequality and harassment and promote safe conservation working environments in Vietnam.

Objectives

  • Understanding and addressing gender-based violence in the Vietnamese wildlife conservation context;

  • Increase support to conservationists for a safer working environment;

  • Reduce harassment and unwanted behavior through the introduction and distribution of specific Safeguarding guidelines.

Activities

  • Workshops and training with employees of wildlife conservation organizations and agencies to discuss their working environment, safety while conducting fieldwork and their perceptions and experiences of harassment in the workplace; 

Read more The workshop GBV in Conservation & Discussion On Solutions To Create A Better World Of Work.

  • Meetings with organisation and agency managers to exchange knowledge, experience and ideas to create a safer environment for employees, especially women;

Read more Meetings with wildlife conservation organization and government agency leaders named “Gender-Based Violence In Wildlife Conservation – From Managers’ Role”

  • Created Safeguarding and supporting materials for women in conservation, as well as establishing the “Wildlife Conservationist for a better world of work” group.

You can read and download A HANDBOOK FOR DEVELOPING A SAFEGUARDING POLICY at HERE.

Join “Wildlife Conservationist for a better world of work” group on Facebook

Stakeholder

In this project, WildAct worked with USAID RISE Challenge and CSAGA Vietnam to address the challenges of  gender-based violence and workplace harassment in the conservation sector and involved a total of 28 organizations and agencies.

National Parks, Nature Reserves, Institute

  • YokDon National Park;

  • Pu Mat National Park

  • U Minh Thuong National Park

  • Hang Kia - Pa Co Nature Reserve;

  • Management Board of special-use and protection forests of Thai Nguyen province;

  • Southern Institute of Ecology;

  • MienTrung Institute for Scientific Research - VietNam National Museum of Nature. 

Local and iNGOs

  • Animals Asia Foundation (AAF);

  • Asian Turtle Program - Indo-Myanmar Conservation (ATP);

  • CHANGE;

  • Save VietNam’s Wildlife (SVW);

  • Free The Bear (FTB);

  • FourPaws;

  • PanNature;

  • World Wide Fund Viet Nam (WWF);

  • GreenViet;

  • Endangered Primate Rescue Center (EPRC);

  • Three Monkeys Wildlife Conservancy.

We also directly involved 1-2 staff members from 18 organisations to create Focal Contact Points. These are trust-worthy people who were nominated to receive gender-related incident reports. Read more at HERE

Report You can read and download HERE.