Access to Justice in Viet Nam

1
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Access to Justice Launch and Training Workshop
• 22-24 September 2005, Cambodia
• Lessons Learned from an Access to Justice Study
  by UNDP Vietnam
• Katrine Riisgaard Pedersen, UNDP Vietnam

2
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Structure of presentation
• Background and purpose of the study
• Issues and findings of the study
• Process and lessons learned

3
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Background - the context
• Vietnam introduced the doi moi reforms in 1986
• The reforms are essentially economic, aiming at
  promoting economic growth and reducing poverty.
  Political/administrative reforms per se have been
  limited and Vietnam continues to be a one-party
  state
• Donors have been involved in public
  administration reform and legal/judicial reform
  since the mid 1990s, mainly focusing on
  developing laws and institutions
• UNDP and other donors are increasingly interested
  in deepening and widening of the legal and
  judicial reforms, including introduction of a
  more people-centered approach

4
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Purpose of the Study
• To promote the concept of access to justice and
  stress the importance of people and equality in
  relation to legal and judicial reform
• To establish a basis from which dialogue, further
  study and future programming could start

5
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Definition of Access to Justice
• Access to Justice is about the ability of people
  to protect their rights in accordance with human
  rights principles and standards by seeking and
  obtaining a remedy through the formal and
  informal justice system.
• Elements of ability to access justice
• Awareness of entitlements and of where to turn to
  claim them
• Access to institutions and/or mechanisms in place
  for redress
• Confidence in the justice system to access it and
  exercise rights.

6
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Main findings
• Institutional and legal framework basically in
  place - but ability of people to make use of and
  benefit from it could be improved
• People do not attach much importance to the
  practical role of law in their daily lives and
  rely on informal sources for legal information
• Low levels of awareness seem to cause inaccurate
  perceptions and uncertainty about existing
  mechanisms. This may explain tendency to turn to
  institutions that are present in the local
  community with which the familiarity is higher
  and reluctance to seek assistance from other
  institutions
• Great disparities - between rich poor and urban
  rural/mountainous regarding legal awareness and
  access to justice

7
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Process - conducting and disseminating research
• Realisation that legal and institutional
  framework has received a lot of attention, while
  the issue of the ability of people to access to
  justice was not explicitly on the reform agenda
• Sub-contracting of an independent law/consultant
  firm to develop research design, conduct
  research, process data and write up report
• UNDP involvement throughout the process to check
  on quality and guide the direction of the
  research as well as the report
• Informal peer review by selected Vietnamese
  governance reformers
• Circulation of Report at bi-annual Consultative
  Group meeting and presentation of report in
  informal launch event at UNDP office

8
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Challenges
• Sensitive and crosscutting issue difficult to
  do with a Government counterpart
• -gt Independent study - more risky and less
  ownership
• Prior similar research almost non-existent and
  experience of consultants and UNDP Vietnam in
  socio-legal research limited
• -gt Heavy UNDP involvement and learning by doing
• Research design based on questionnaires
• -gt Qualitative and detailed information limited
• Due to sensitivity the study was carried out as
  an ad hoc activity
• -gt Follow up activities not planned

9
Access to Justice in Viet Nam

• Lessons learned
• Good preparations reduce the challenges emerging
  later!
• A national counterpart is preferable
• A cross-disciplinary team including experienced
  sociologists/ researchers is preferable
• A three stage study composed of a i)
  explorative/qualitative ii) descriptive/
  quantitative iii) explanatory/qualitative part
  may create a stronger study
• Follow up activities should be planned in time