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PRESS RELEASE:
Vietnam's Prime Minister Announces the Implementation of a $15.5 Billion Just Energy Transition Plan While Climate Leaders Remain in Jail
1st December 2023
(COP 28, Dubai) - On the 1st of December 2023, Vietnam's Prime Minister, Pham Minh Chinh, announced the country's implementation plan for its $15.5 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) funds, without a single mention of the six climate leaders who have been imprisoned for seeking greater accountability in the country’s climate change and energy investments.
This press release, issued by the Vietnam Climate Defenders Coalition, denounces the Vietnamese government's hypocrisy and its continuing repression of climate leaders, while using Just Transition funds to greenwash its actions.
The Coalition - consisting of dozens of international and regional environmental, climate, and human rights organizations - calls on the International Partners Group and JETP financiers to:
• Seek the urgent release of Mr. Dang Dinh Bach, Ms. Hoang Thi Minh Hong, and other unjustly imprisoned civil society leaders in Vietnam.
• Conduct rigorous due diligence on threats to environmental and human rights defenders and restrictions on environmental activism and civic engagement in Vietnam, in accordance with the environmental and social safeguard standards of various JETP stakeholders, as they relate to the financing and implementation of the JETP.
• Ensure strict adherence to the reprisal policies and public participation commitments of JETP stakeholders, including the IFC, the ADB, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); and develop specific protocols to proactively respond to reprisals should they occur.
• Require that JETP financing and implementation is contingent upon explicit protections against retaliation and reprisals for environmental and human rights defenders, together with policy frameworks for free and safe participation of civil society in JETP design, decision-making, monitoring, and implementation.
• Promote enabling conditions for civil society provided for by international standards and treaties aimed at creating and maintaining, in law and in practice, a safe enabling environment for civil society to freely operate, including reform of laws and policies related to registration and tax requirements for civil society associations that are overly burdensome and incompatible with fundamental rights, including freedom of assembly, association, and expression.