Considering Cross-National Equity: Children in Highland Populations in South-East Asia

Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir

Martin C. Evans

Ishani Shrestha

Considering Cross-National Equity: Children in Highland Populations in South-East Asia

Cross-Sectoral Policy, Division of Policy and Strategy

UNICEF

3 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017

This is a working document. It has been prepared to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and to stimulate discussion.

The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of UNICEF or of the United Nations.

The text has not been edited to official publication standards, and UNICEF accepts no responsibility for errors.

The designations in this publication do not imply an opinion on legal status of any country or territory, or of its authorities, or the delimitation of frontiers.

The editor of the series is Jingqing Chai of UNICEF Policy and Strategy Division. For more information on the series, or to submit a working paper, please contact

Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir

Policy Analyst, Policy and Strategy, UNICEF

Martin C. Evans

Social Policy and Economic Analysis Specialist, Policy and Strategy, UNICEF

Ishani Shrestha

Mt. Holyoke Intern, Policy and Strategy, UNICEF

Comments may be addressed by email to the authors: and

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to the comments and suggestions made by Andrew Claypole, Beatrice Duncan, Christina Popivanova, David Anthony, Etona Ekole, Jeffrey O’Malley, Jingqing Chai, Mahesh Patel, Mizuho Okimoto-Kaewtathip, Thi Van Anh Nguyen, Lena Nguyen, Nicholas Rees, Nicola Brandt, Valentina Calderon and Yoshimi Nishino.

The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of UNICEF or of the United Nations.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

1.Introduction

2.Equity and Ethnicity

3.Hill People of Southeast Asia

3.1Viet Nam

3.2Lao PDR

3.3 Thailand

4.Hill People Populations

4.1Identifying Hill People in Survey Data

4.2Population and Sample Sizes

4.3Household Size and Composition

4.4Locational Characteristics

5.Hill People and Ethnic Equity Profiling

5.1Asset Quintiles

5.2Deprivation, MDGs and Child Well-Being Measures

a.Drinking Water

b.Sanitation

c.Nutrition

d.Health

e.Education

f.Early Childhood Development

6.Equity Monitoring and Target Setting

6.1Equity Target Option 1: Equality of Ethnic-Related Risk

6.2 Equity Target Option 2: Achieving Fair Outcomes

a.Basing fairness on ‘average’ (mean) levels of incidence.

b.Equalizing shares of deprivation to match population share.

7.Concluding remarks

Tables

Table 1. Difference in Hill People household size and composition

Table 2: Children in households with unimproved sanitation in Viet Nam

Table 3: Hill People deprivation and population shares for water and sanitation

Figures

Figure 1: Population/children in poorest quintile %

Figure 2: Children in households with unimproved sanitation

Figure 3: Children 0-4 yrs stunted %

Figure 4: Children under 5 yrs who have received no vaccination

Figure 5: Children aged 12 to 14 not progressed to secondary education %

Figure 6: Children not attending early childhood education programme %

Executive Summary

In line with UNICEF’s equity focus this paper discusses and demonstrates approaches to the empirical profiling of children in ethnic minorities. Using an equity lens, our analysis demonstrates how survey data can be used in child deprivation profiling to identify the ‘most disadvantaged’. Ethnic minority children, like all other children, are entitled without discrimination to all the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international human rights instruments. Investing in better information on children from minority communities means improving our understanding of ethnic classifications, alongside issues of human and economic development.

Our research addresses the challenge of using Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data to drill down to potentially small sub-groups of the population. The approach moves ethnic analysis from one based on aggregated profiles that tend to present just two groups, the ‘ethnic majority’ and ‘ethnic minorities’, to a more nuanced approach that addresses equity issues between ‘ethnic minorities’. We focus on children from Hill People minority communities across three countries in South East Asia: Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand. By looking at a common ethnic cluster of populations, Hill People, we address how to consistently identify, measure and report equity issues for ‘indigenous peoples’ (using the UN definition that covers Hill People of SE Asia) and thus of cross-national ethnic minorities as well as national populations.

The audience for this paper is primarily those who need to identify equity issues for ethnic minorities and other populations in order to accurately assess needs, differences in needs and design programme responses and determine resource allocations. In particular, the paper is a resource for country level Situation Analysis profiles conducted by UNICEF and other UN sister organisations, and similar profiling exercises undertaken by national government departments and NGOs. At its simplest we demonstrate how to use more detail in locally available data to identify the most disadvantaged children.

This paper presents three country analyses alongside each other which are designed to be an exemplar that can be replicated in other countries concerned with child focused ethnic minority profiling. It provides UNICEF and other child rights partners and governments with a useful tool for equity related targeting for programming purposes. In addition, focusing on a cross-national ethnic minority group provides an opportunity for inter-regional learning and inter-country co-operation for addressing inequities.

Our findings demonstrate three important areas of ethnic minority profiling:

1)The importance of rich profiling for a comprehensive understanding of ethnically based inequities, going beyond comparing the majority population against a single aggregate ethnic minority group

2)Robust methods and approaches to profiling small cross-national sub-groups (within the specified limitations of survey design) which can be adopted more widely in child focused ethnic profiling work

3)The potential of inter-country learning and cooperation for addressing cross-national ethnic inequities

In terms of the empirical results from this approach, we find for the three countries, children from Hill People communities have consistently worse outcomes (in water, sanitation, nutrition, health, education and early childhood development) than children from the ethnic majority, and also worse outcomes than children from other ethnic minorities (except in Laos, where children from other minority groups sometime have the worst outcomes). The evidence indicates that Hill People children are well placed as a group to benefit from equity re-focus based on ethnicity. The paper encourages cross-national sharing of good policy and programming practices in overcoming the challenges children of Hill People communities face.

1. Introduction

UNICEF’s refocus on equity in recent years requires improved identification and analysis of disadvantaged groups of the population, in order to re-prioritise programming to meet the needs and address underlying inequities of these disadvantaged groups. This paper considers ethnic equity issues as they pertain to Hill People, a cross-national ethnic minority group living in the upland regions across many countries in mainland South-East Asia. We focus on a cross-national ethnic minority group for three reasons. First, although ethnic identity and inequity are commonly linked, they are not always distinguished by national borders. Other studies in Latin America have identified cross-national indigenous populations for specific profiles of poverty and deprivation (UNICEF/CEPAL, 2010)[1] and in Europe the Roma community have similarly been the subject of cross-national concern (UNICEF, 2011). Second, inter-regional learning and inter-country co-operation may be needed to identify the needs and approaches of common interest in communities that are not only cross-national but also straddle national border zones. Differences in deprivation profiles for such cross-national groups may represent differences in national policy and practice. This means that the approaches that seem to work better for a certain community in one country may well hold important lessons for neighbours with similar underlying constraints of remoteness and topography. This paper does not provide such comparative cross-national policy analysis, but rather the results highlight the importance of such future analysis. Third, measuring success in reducing inequities can be improved if done cross-nationally. Consistent measures of inequity and targeting approaches for reducing inequities allow a clearer understanding of common and different factors, rather than relying solely on country-level measures and approaches for very similar interventions and circumstances. UNICEF’s programming for such communities may thus benefit from consistent cross national approaches to ethnic inequity related issues.

UNICEF’s equity approach leads to some of the following questions on measurement:

How to consistently and accurately identify ethnic population sub-groups
How to robustly identify and measure inequity in potentially small sub-groups of the population
How to set targets for redressing ethnic inequity

This paper focuses on these empirical questions of identification, measurement and target setting and thus can provide useful guidance to UNICEF’s Monitoring Results for Equity (MoRES)-based approach, as well as other monitoring frameworks. The aim of this paper is therefore not only to provide an overview of children belonging to a particular cross-national ethnic minority, but also demonstrate methods and approaches to profiling small sub-groups of the population that can be adopted more widely. We consider the circumstances and characteristics of children in ‘Hill People’ communities in three out of the many countries in continental South-East Asia in which they live: Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand.

2. Equity and Ethnicity

When considering the drivers of national child level disparities, ethnic inequity is a prominent feature of disparity analysis. However, in many countries there are several ‘ethnic minority’ groups and using an ‘ethnic minority’ aggregate group to profile inequity can hinder an appreciation of how heterogeneous ethnic minorities often are, as well as hinder a comprehensive understanding of ethnically based inequity. Ethnic minority communities diverge from the ethnic majority population in different ways, and treating them in an aggregate can, for example, mix high income minorities with poor minorities, as well as highly deprived children with less deprived.

However, once the need to separately assess ethnic minorities is acknowledged, it leads to problems of accurate identification of these various minorities. Reporting on, for example, all the 49 ethnic groups currently identified in Laos is complicated, hence some sort of aggregation is necessary. A major empirical problem is how to consistently and accurately draw ethnic identity from survey data, such as MICS, DHS or other household surveys. National statistical offices may have ethnic definitions that differ from these surveys, as well as different conventions on aggregating small groups. Some of these approaches may reflect politicised definitions of racial or ethnic difference and must be carefully considered before being used in profiling and analysis: some groups may be assimilated into the majority[2] and some groups assigned to an ‘other’ category, for instance. In this paper our approach explores and exemplifies a consistent analysis that clearly defines ethnic groups, within the specified limitations of survey design.

3. Hill People of Southeast Asia

Hill People refer to communities with common characteristics in South-East Asia, but go by many names and languages and cultures. Collectively they can be known as ‘Hill tribes’, ‘Montagnards’ (especially in the Central Highlands of Vietnam), ‘Southeast Asian Massif populations’ and ‘Highland ethnic minorities’. [3] The majority live above an elevation of 500 meters, across many countries and an area of approximately 2.5 million square kilometres (approximately the size of Western Europe). They are extremely diverse, geographically dispersed and politically fragmented communities with linguistic, cultural and religious differences. Their many linguistic and cultural identities include for instance the Akha, Bodo-Kachari, Lahu, Karen, Hmong Mien, Mizo and Lisu who are all Tibeto-Burman peoples who migrated over recent centuries into the areas from southern China and Tibetan regions, as well as groups who speak Malayo-Polynesian, Tai, and Mon–Khmer based languages.

Hill People are recognised as being distinct from lowland living communities in several important ways. Lowland communities, while diverse, generally share a common language and culture and have developed and maintained the dominant social institutions in national political environments. Hill People do not share that heritage, and historically persistent conflicts exist between highland and lowland groups over many issues, including land ownership, language and cultural preservation, access to education and resources, as well as political representation.

The commonality across Hill People is they are ethnic and cultural political minorities and live on both the topographic and social fringes of society, in elevated and rugged terrain. In these terrains they have tried to preserve their local cultures from state control and influence of lowland majorities[4]. They are mostly non Buddhist/Confucian in religious beliefs and traditionally animist and shamanist, but in some areas they have adapted to major religions such as forms of Christianity. Their economic systems do not rely on paddy rice or industrial production (which the majority group most commonly relies on), instead their systems traditionally ranged from hunting and gathering, forest horticulture, swidden farming and upland rice growing, and trade with lowland communities – particularly in forest and mineral products (gems and silver especially). Prior to prohibition, traditional agricultural activity also involved opium poppy production.[5]

Our analysis focuses on Laos, Thailand and Viet Nam as all these countries have household survey data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) from 2005/6, and all countries participated in the MICS4 round allowing for potential further analysis. We now turn to consider the position of Hill People profiling in these countries

3.1 Viet Nam

Most ethnic, social and economic inequity profiling to date in Viet Nam has compared all ethnic minorities against the Kinh majority (and often with the Chinese ethnic group aligned with the majority Kinh group), and not explicitly identified Hill People.

Poverty profiling has demonstrated that ‘ethnic minorities’ living in the Northern and Central Highlands (and thus disproportionately Hill People) have substantially higher risk of poverty than other ethnic minorities.[6] While the Vietnamese government has directed significant resources and designed specific programmes aimed at ethnic minorities, as well as officially prohibiting discrimination against ethnic minorities, there is a persistent lag in development and longstanding societal discrimination against Hill People. Their higher poverty risk and lower agricultural productivity is often ascribed to ‘backwardness’ by the majority. The issue of land rights and relocation has affected Hill People in Viet Nam, many of whom have lost productive gains from land for several reasons, such as programmes of ‘sedentarisation’ and the loss of customary land, as well as resettlement of Hill People villages.

As said, remoteness in upland areas is one distinguishing feature of Hill People. However, Viet Nam analysis has shown that the independent roles of remoteness and topography can only partly explain differences in poverty causation and inequality, and thus factors relating to ethnicity play a large part.[7] Detailed survey and assessment of ethnic differences focus on low assets (both in physical and human development terms); barriers to access for education, healthcare[8], labour market and commerce; very low migration rates to urban centres; poor cultural appropriate in the design of anti-poverty and other programmes; and the lack of social and political voice.[9] Recent profiles of ethnic minorities in Viet Nam suggest that other rurally located minorities such as Cham and Khmer communities have experienced some narrowing of the gap with the Kinh majority, however for highland minorities, and especially those in the Central Highlands, the gap has widened. Industrialization and foreign direct investment are mostly concentrated in the major cities where the Kinh ethnic majority mostly resides and therefore benefit the most from the associated rapid economic growth.[10] Development projects in the rural and remote areas have also been largely dominated by ethnic majority based finance for migrant settlers and commercial agricultural projects.

The 2008 Viet Nam Household Living Standard Survey showed only modest progress in reducing poverty levels among ethnic minority populations, which fell from 52.3 per cent in 2006 to 49.8 per cent in 2008. This is much less than the reduction seen in the poverty rate of the Kinh population (down from 10.3 to 8.5 per cent). Children belonging to ethnic minority groups are particularly at greater risk of being poor compared to children from the Kinh/Chinese ethnic majority, and this is especially the case in rural areas.[11] The 2011 Viet Nam MICS demonstrates substantial ethnic disparities; ethnic minority children are three times as likely as Kinh/Hoa children to die before their first and fifth birthdays, and likewise there are large disparities between the nutritional status of ethnic minority children as compared to ethnic majority children, and one in every four Vietnamese living in ethnic minority households defecate in the open.[12]

An evaluation of various government programs to support ethnic minorities suggests that they have been insufficient and often poorly targeted towards ethnic minorities, as well as poorly matched to their specific needs of language and culture, for example only one out of seven vocational training projects and two out of five housing projects focus on the specific needs of ethnic minorities[13].