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Vietnam and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The case in law Explainer 13 views 3 min read Back

On September 13, 2007, Vietnam voted for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It has never accepted that the Declaration applies to anyone inside Vietnam. This page sets out the vote, the position Vietnam has taken since, and what UN treaty bodies have said about it.

An elder reading from a book to younger people — The Declaration speaks of peoples, not persons. Which word applies to us is the whole dispute. Illustration.

The vote

	Votes	States
For	143	including Viet Nam
Against	4	Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States — all four later reversed their position
Abstained	11	Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Samoa, Ukraine

General Assembly resolution 61/295, September 13, 2007. What the Declaration contains, and why it matters more than minority rights, is on Indigenous rights at the United Nations.

“Minority people,” not indigenous peoples

Vietnam recognizes 54 ethnic groups, 53 of them minorities. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs records that the government does not apply the term “indigenous peoples” to any of them, and that although it voted for the Declaration it does not recognize ethnic minorities as indigenous and has not ratified ILO Convention 169, the binding treaty on indigenous and tribal peoples.

Vietnam stated the position itself to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in November 2023. The UN’s summary records that the delegation “did not use the term ‘indigenous peoples’ but rather ‘minority people’ for historical reasons.”

What the treaty bodies have said

Human Rights Committee, 2019. “The Committee is concerned that the State party does not recognize the indigenous peoples in Viet Nam.” It found that communities are not sufficiently consulted on the seizure and allocation of land, “including traditional and ancestral lands,” and asked Vietnam to consult indigenous peoples to obtain their free, prior and informed consent, and to handle relocation according to international standards, including return to ancestral lands where applicable.

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 2023. The Committee’s experts said the government did not recognize any of the 53 minorities as indigenous and was “reluctant to engage in open and inclusive discussions on the recognition of indigenous peoples.” They asked directly: “Would Viet Nam accept the existence of indigenous peoples and their rights in Viet Nam?” and, welcoming Vietnam’s stated commitment to indigenous peoples’ right of self-identification, called for further efforts. The same dialogue raised the arrest and prosecution of about a hundred Montagnards after the June 2023 attacks in Đắk Lắk (see Cu Kuin, 2023).

Even the Declaration is policed

At the same 2023 session, experts raised reports that Khmer Krom young people were being held in police custody for sharing information online about the Declaration and distributing translated booklets. A state that voted for a text is detaining people for translating it.

Why the word matters to us

Under minority rights, a Dega is a person entitled to speak Rhade and go to church. Under the Declaration, the Dega are peoples with rights to the lands they have “traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used,” to consent before relocation, and to their own institutions. Every land case on this site — coffee, the dams, rubber — reads differently depending on which framework applies. Vietnam’s refusal of the word is a refusal of those rights, not a matter of vocabulary. We identify ourselves as an indigenous people; the principle of self-identification, which CERD has pressed Vietnam to honor, says that is where the question begins.

Sources

UN DESA, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; UN Digital Library, voting record for A/RES/61/295
UN Human Rights Committee, concluding observations on Viet Nam, CCPR/C/VNM/CO/3 (2019), paras 55–56
OHCHR, “In dialogue with Viet Nam, experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination…,” November 30, 2023; concluding observations CERD/C/VNM/CO/15-17
IWGIA, Vietnam
See also The UN record

Compiled September 2026. We have not been able to read Vietnam’s explanation of its 2007 vote, if it gave one (UN press release GA/10612); we will add it when we have checked it.

undrip indigenous peoples vietnam united nations general assembly 2007 cerd human rights committee ilo 169 self-identification minority fpic law

Indigenous rights at the United Nations, and why the word matters There are two bodies of international law available to a people in our position. One protects minorities. The other protects indigenous peoples, and it is far stronger: it deals in land, consent and institutions rather than in tolerance. Which one applies to the Dega turns on a single contested word, and that is why the word is fought over so hard. Reference 39 views Read More What Vietnam signed, and what happens in the highlands Vietnam has ratified the major human rights instruments and sits as a member of the United Nations. The obligations are not disputed and they are not optional. Set against them is the record in the Central Highlands, documented by UN bodies and independent organizations. This page puts the two columns side by side. Comparison 46 views Read More What the Dega ask for Three aims, stated in 1964 and never withdrawn, pursued since 1992 by peaceful means only. Beneath them, the rights the United Nations has set out for indigenous peoples — every one of which has been taken from us — and, at the end, the four things that could be done next week by a government that wanted to. Policy 31 views Read More What the United Nations has said The Dega have been named in United Nations documents for more than thirty years — in our own submissions, in the findings of treaty bodies that examine Vietnam, and in letters from independent experts to the Vietnamese government. This page is a register of the ones we can link to, in order, with what each actually said. Reference 16 views Read More What Washington has said The United States recruited, armed and paid tens of thousands of Dega soldiers, and since 1986 has given many of their families a home. Congress has returned to the subject again and again: in hearings, in resolutions, and in reports by its own researchers. This page lists the record, so that anyone writing to their representative can cite what... Reference 14 views Read More The Law on Belief and Religion (2018) Vietnam’s Law on Belief and Religion came into force on January 1, 2018. It makes worship lawful only through a registered, state-approved organization. For Dega house churches, which have never been allowed to register as themselves, it turned an old practice into statute. The UN Human Rights Committee has found that it “unduly restricts” freed... Reference 13 views Read More