Reflection paper:

Revisitng conflict analysis from human rights, gender and violence perspectives
Le Thien Tri

UMP 6001 (UPEACE Foundation Course)

University for Peace
September 12th, 2016

Introduction
Vietnam is a socialist republic in the Southeast of Asia. For more than seventy years,
the country has only one political party - the Communist. Vietnam has become member with
various international institutions, including the WTO, UN, UNSC, IMF At regional level,
in the Southeast of Asia, Vietnam gained membership of the ASEAN community in 1995.
The country has ratified 9 out of 13 UN treaties and conventions such as the Universial
Declaration of Human Rights, the CEDAW, CRC . However, there are still concerns
among the international community on Vietnams human rights practices. According to
Amnesty International, the country has records of illegal detention of political bloggers,
human rights activists and the opposition. Shaming and naming political leaders are
considered unacceptable. Though there is a handful of more than 700 media agencies, who

must register with a state-agency, the Freedom House classifies Vietnam in Not-Free category
for its violations and constraints of freedom of speech and freedom on the net. In addition to
that, corruption is alarming. For four consecutive years from 2012, Transparency
International ranks Vietnam among countries with very high rate of corruption (Corruption
Perception Index, 2012 2015). Against this backdrop, conflicts between Vietnamese people
and the Government have been increasing in recent years, threatening Vietnams peace and
social development.
This paper uses the case of public protest taking place in Vietnam in early May 2016
to demand the government response on the direct discharge of industrial wastewater to the
sea by Formosa for discussion various theories and concepts in the foundation course. This
case will be examined under the perspectives of human rights, conflicts, violence and gender.
A discussion on the importance for academia to shift attention from interstate conflict
towards intrastate conflicts will conclude this paper.

Formosa: The Case of Public Protest for Transparency and Accountability

According to The World Post (2016) and the Washington Post (2016), Vietnamese
activists rallied from north to south of Vietnam in late April and early May 2016 after
hundreds of tons of aquatic species died along the coastal provinces which occurred due to
the discharge of toxic chemicals by Formosa, a steel company into the ocean. One diver died
and 15 others were hospitalized for urgent emergency after they worked in sea waters in this
region. Fishermen there reported that toxic substances had killed all local coral. They also
reportedly saw a huge volume of death fish in the sea bed which was covered with a thick
white layer of toxic chemicals. Silence from the government brought thousands of activists
rallied in centers of the localities, hanging banners and chanting to demand for transparency

in the investigation of the case and request the government to take urgent measures to deal
with the serious disaster.
The peaceful protests soon became violent. Police arrested nearly a hundred of
activists, including young mothers and their children and took them to police stations in Long
Bien and Ha Dong districts. Police officers also knocked down a teacher and many student
activists on the ground when they stood near the Cathedral, and took the activists into a bus
where they were treated like animals. In HCMC, the biggest economic hub of Vietnam,
around two thousands of local activists gathered around Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of
Saigon to protest. The local police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, beating many
of them and arrested hundreds of people and took them to a local stadium. Police released
many people but still keep many others by the evening of the same day. In addition, police
also attacked with violent means and detended a number of environmentalists in the central
cities, who were trying to collect sea water samples for lab experiments. Many political
dissidents, social activists and human rights across the nation complained that they have been
barred from going out on Sunday. Police officers and plainclothes agents were stationed near
their private residences to prevent them from protesting.
Farmers, fishermen and local residents in central provinces became vulnerable. They
depend on the ocean as resources and have no other alternative to feed their families, to send
their children to school and to take care of other daily needs.
The Formosa Conflict: Gender-sensitive conflict analysis
According to Gaigals & Leonhardt (2001), key elements in conflict analysis would
include root causes, involved actors, dynamics of the conflict and different possibilities that
may happen. Firstly, on cause of conflict, they contended that there are three types of cause in
any conflict: structural, proximate and triggers. Structural cause refers to built-in factors of a

society, such as policies, structures which may create preconditions for violent conflict;
proximate cause includes factors contributing to further escalation of the conflict or deeper
problem; and triggers are key acts, events or their anticipation that will set off or escalate
violent conflict. (pg. 3). Secondly, actors are people involving in the conflict, which include
individuals, groups and institutions contributing to or being affected by the conflict (Gaigals
& Leonhardt, 2001). Actor analysis should consider their goals, interests, positions, capacities
and relationships. And lastly, prediction of potential scenario makes it possible for
intervention and the prevention of conflict escalation. The authors contend that there should
be at minimal three scenarios to be developed: the best, the medium and the worst.
Adding to traditional view on conflict analysis, understanding gender and how gender
is related to peace and conflict in a particular time and place is key to designing inclusive and
effective peacebuilding interventions (Tielemans, 2015; Pankhurst, 2008; Spike, 2010).
Tielemans (2015) also maintains that a gender-sensitive conflict analysis can clarify:

Similarities and differences in the conflict experiences of women, men and gender

minorities; how the conflict affect their role divisions;

How conflict results in changing power relations, which often exclude women;
What is required to enable greater inclusion in peace and security efforts in a

particular context;
Identify gender-related challenges to participation in decision-making;
How gender norms may cause violence;
Gender power dynamics between and among actors.
The following analysis of Formosa case incorporates two framework: conflict analysis

and gender analysis to understand how they are intertwined with each other.
Causes

Structural

High corruption in Vietnam (Transparency

International score: 31/100, rank 112/168 countries.
Corruption entails public distrust on the
government.

Weak law enforcement: investment law allows no

more than 50 years license to do business in
Vietnam, but Formosa received 70 years license; in
addition, provincial authority could not access
Formosas premise for inspection. The company
Proximate

stays above the law.

Pro-communist party scientists: support Formosa
by blaming toxic seaweed causing the death of fish
and marine species.
Communist part leader to visit Formosa
immediately after the incident.
Environmentalists were not allowed to collect water

Triggers

samples in the contaminated areas.

Police beating a mother and her child during the
peaceful protest;
1 diver at water closed to Formosa died and 15

Actors

Formosa

others were hospitalized.

Goal: to save money from wastewater processing
and compensation for the environmental damage
Position: the suspect, willing to bribe to conceal the
case; publicize the case will damage their global
brand
Capacities: financially capable.
Relationships: strong relationship with the party

Communist Party of

leaders, government officials and media.

Goal: to conceal the case from corruption

Vietnam, Ministry of

investigation

Planning and Investment,

Position: control state media; suppress the

Department of Natural

protestors; protect the regimes credibility

Resources and Environment

Capacities: absolute control over the police,

in Ha Tinh province

military, media and university students;

Local residents in central

Relationship: strongly support to Formosa

Goal: to be able to fish again; to get compensation

provinces whose lives were

supporting their livelihood

threatened.

Position: hold Formosa accountable

Capacities: limited
Relationship: among the fishermen and the affected

Environmentalists,

people themselves
Goal: to tell the truth what caused the death of

environmental NGOs: to

fish and marine life; to hold perpetrator accountable

counter balance with state-

and responsible; to restore livelihood for the

driven information trying to

affected people;

conceal the problem.

Position: support the affected people

Capacity: technical capable; have resources to
support;
Relationship: have strong connections with

The protestors: to hold the

international media, NGOs and scientists;

Goal: to hold the government accountable; to hold

government accountable and

Formosa responsible for the damages and demand

demand for justice.

greater transparency in the government;

Position: against Formosa, corrupted government;
take side with the affected people, NGOs and
foreign scientists;
Relationships: with pro-democracy overseas
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Vietnamese groups, with International NGOs and

State media:

International media
Goal: to support the goal of the Party and
Government
Position: to drive public discourse on the cause of
fish death
Capacity: nation-wide coverage; printed and
Internet-based;
Relationship: with Communist party, Government,

Dynamic

Best

Formosa.
The Vietnamese government will investigate the
case of Formasa and allow civil society

Medium

organizations to engage. The protestors will stop.

The Vietnamese government will investigate the
case of Formosa and release information to public,
however, no third party is allowed to participate the
process. Transparency is therefore not achieved.

Worst

However, the protestors will stop.

The Vietnamese government will suppress the
protestors with violence and armed forces.
Transparency, accountability is not achieved. The
protestors will continue.

Both women and men are affected by this resource conflict between the steel
company and the people. Before the contamination, men were responsible for the income of
their families. Men made decisions on when, where to fish, when to sell, how much to sell
and at which price, Owning major source of income, men are obviously head of household
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to make decisions on most other matters: marriage of their sons and daughters, community
decisions, which courses/schools that their sons and daughters should takeThis results in
the fact that more boys receive education than girls. Women play subordinate roles at home
and in the kitchen while men suffer from the burden to make money feeding the whole
family.
However, when fish were no longer to be fished. Men do not have skills to work in
land and women are not equipped with knowledge and professional skills to find jobs. The
traditional functions and social norms require women to struggle even harder to feed their
families, since they are responsible for cooking, even without financial supply from their
men. Therefore, the contamination situation in central provinces displaced young men and
women, who left their hometown to seek for jobs elsewhere. As of August 2016 report from
the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, big cities such as Ho Chi Minh city, Vung
Tau, Da Nang, Can Tho, Hanoi, Hue witness an increase in social evils and prostitutions,
which may have direct connection with the displaced people who left their home towns
seeking for jobs.
If it had not been for gender norms that decide what jobs are to men and women, both
men and women in these provinces could have received education to make them more
resilient to the crisis. Men might have learned skills to do other jobs than fishing (as they
believe, men are strong enough to challenge ocean waves) and women might be sent to
schools for education and skill training. Gender-based role divisions may not be so
problematic during the peaceful time, however, it did not help people survive during the
crisis/conflicting situation and, contributing to make peoples life more vulnerable.

The Formosa conflict: Human Rights Perspective

Dembour (2010) contended that academic literature on human rights did not agree on
the same discourse and classified four different schools of thoughts on the subject. The
natural school conceives human rights a given, which every human being is entitled;
therefore, human rights are universal. Scholars from deliberative school see human rights as
agreed upon and seeing law is the only mode of existence. Social activists are seen to fall
for the protest school, they do not share the belief that human rights are naturally given to all
human beings and violations take place if people are not fighting for their rights. The
discourse scholars are the most skeptical about human rights. They argue that it is the
language that people talk about and has no practical aspect (Dembour, 2010).
To examine the connection between human rights violation and conflicts, Sriram et al
(2010) discussed five ways in which these two subjects were intertwined:

human rights violations as cause of conflict;

human rights violations as consequences of conflict;
human rights violations as both causes and consequences of conflicts
human rights violations as transformative of conflict dynamics
human rights and accountability as demand during peace negotiations and post
conflict peacebuilding.
The authors defines violent conflict as illegal detention, extrajudicial execution,

disappearance, torture, widespread killing or even attempt at genocide (Sriram et al, 2010). In
this definition, the case of Formosa can be considered violent conflict, where the police (state
actor) used violent means (baton, tear gas) to physically beat and suppress the protestors.
Illegal detention were also detected, thousands of protestors were brought into the 24 hours
detention without going through judicial procedure; a handful of several hundred human
rights activists were not allowed to leave their houses during the peak of the public protest.
The right to life of right holders local residents in the affected coastal provinces
were threatened since they relied on ocean resources. The geographical conditions, mostly
unusable land with lime stone and sand are not favorable for agriculture production, people

find their food and from fish and depend on income from fish selling fish for other needs:
social, community life, send children to school, Without fish and alternative livelihood,
their lives are at risk.
In this case, the right to information was denied, though it is recognized in the
Vietnamese Constitution. The public reserves their rights to know the truth of the causes as
well as their compensations, the perpetrators, By denying to access of environmentalists to
collect samples and giving inaccurate information to the public, the Vietnamese government
has violated the right to information.
Blocking access to Internet, blocking state-own media to report on the public protest
and shutting down Facebook access during the peak of the protest are evidence of denying
freedom of speech. University students were threatened to expel from school if they
participated in public protests.
In facts, these violations of rights did not solve the problem they ways the
Government and Formosa wanted. It triggered public solidarity and became a bigger crowd to
protest. From the very first protest, a few hundred people joined, however, in the end of May,
hundred became thousands; from only two major cities in the beginning, protestors extended
their solidarity to most cities across the nation. Unfortunately, before the situation became
uncontrolled, the armed forces deployed violent means to suppress: detention, batons, fences,
tankers and tear gas.
This analysis is in line with claim from Sriram et al. (2014), human rights violation
was the causes of this conflict.

The Formosa Conflict: Violent elements

Galtung (1969) deconstructed violence into three components: (1) Direct violence:
personal violence is when there is a human actor immediately implementing that act of

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violence; (2) Structural violence: a form of violence wherein some social structure or social
institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs; (3) Cultural
violence: aspects that can be used to legitimized direct or structural violence. He argued that
the three concepts of violence should be examined and analyzed in six dimensions:
1. Physical and Psychological violence: psychological aspect of violence is included,
which has equal importance to physical violence. Psychological violence can be in the
form of threatening to use physical violence or torture.
2. Positive and Negative approach to influence: The dominant group such as the U.S.
and the former Soviet could withdraw what it desires to punish behavior or to increase
what it desires to promote behavior are example from positive and negative approach
to influence, which is, according to Galtung, a form of violence.
3. Whether or not there is an object that is hurt: There is no need to have an object to be
hurt so that violence can occur. A few countries that have nuclear weapons can
maintain threat of violence against non-nuclear countries.
4. Whether or not there is a subject (person) who acts: This consideration refers to
structural violence, which does not require a specific actor to implement the act of
violence. For example, the belief that girls do not need to obtain higher education are
shared among Vietnamese, Chinese and people in some other countries. There are no
specific actor to implement, however, it prevents women and girls to access
education.
5. Intended and Unintended violence: While intended violence tends to look into
criticizing actions implemented by individuals, violence caused by institutional

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arrangement, cultural belief are often disregarded. Failure to recognize unintended

behaviors will entail a failure to address structural and cultural violence.
6. Manifest and Latent violence: Manifest violence is that which is observable whether
or not it is recognized as is the case for some forms of structural violence. Latent
violence is the underlying potential for violence which may lead to manifest violence
(pg. 172).
Reflecting Galtungs conceptualization of violence on the case of Formosa,
manifestation of violence can be found in all forms: direct, structural and cultural. Firstly, in
the most obvious form, direct violence happened between the protestor and the police. The
use of fence, baton, tear-gas cause physical wounds to a women, her daughter and many
students. The discharge of wastewater and toxics into the ocean also caused physical and
psychological violence against the indigenous people living on the marine resources. The sea
does not only means income or food, for people living from generation to generation with the
sea, the sea also means home. I believe that being displaced from home cause psychological
damages, which require further research. Secondly, the absence of judicial mechanism for
affected people to demand for justice and unresponsiveness from the government among
structural violence to deny access to justice for people. Moreover, the absence of law on
demonstration, controlled media and Internet/Facebook blockage have made it even harder
for people to claim their rights. These manifestations of structural violence prevent people to
access their basic needs: food, education, freedom of speech. And lastly but interestingly,
when physical violence against the woman and her daughter happened, there was strong
movement of criticism against the victim. Representatives for this movement argued that the
woman should not involve in public protest and as a woman, she should stay at home to take

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care of her daughter, rather than joining the protest, where violence was expected. Such
argument legitimizes the use of violence by the armed force on the peaceful protestors.

Conclusion
In conclusion, even though the selected case is not a typical case study for armed
conflict, it encompasses most elements of an armed conflict: affecting the role divisions,
participation, access to resources of women and men. Certain human rights have been
violated, which were seen as both causes and consequences of the conflict. Violence
happened at all form: directly physical violence on targeted people; structurally absent of
laws and legal mechanism preventing people to access basic needs and culturally norms that
legitimize the other two forms of violence.
Our present world order with international laws and legal system have significantly
reduced interstate conflicts, however, shifting towards an increase in intrastate conflicts,
where states have their sovereign responsibilities to ensure the needs of their people are met.
As we can see from the above case, it does not require a prolonged armed conflict to gain our
attention, even the popular case of resource conflict as in the case of Formosa can incorporate
all elements of an armed conflict. Therefore, it is important to shift our attention to study
conflicts that take place within a territorial state.

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Refercences
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Problem. The World Post.
Dembour, M. B. (2010). What are human rights? Four schools of thought. Human Rights
Quarterly, 32(1), pp. 1-20.
Gaigals, C., & Leonhardt, M. (2001). Conflict Sensitive Approaches to Development: A
Review of Practice. Saferworld.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of peace research, 6(3), 167191.
Pankhurst, D. (2008). The gendered impact of peace. In Whose peace? Critical perspectives
on the political economy of peacebuilding (pp. 30-46). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Peterson, V. S. (2010). Gendered identities, ideologies, and practices in the context of war
and militarism. Gender, war, and militarism: Feminist perspectives, 17-29.
Sriram, C. L., Martin-Ortega, O., & Herman, J. (2014). War, conflict and human rights:
theory and practice. Routledge.
Tharoor, I. (2016, May 23). In shadow of Obamas visit, Vietnam cracked down on protests
over dead fish. The Washington Post.
Tielemans, S. (2015). Gender & conflict analysis toolkit for peacebuilders. London, UK:
Conciliation Resources
Transparency International (2012 2015). Corruption Perception Index 2012 2015. Berlin,
Germany: Transparency International.