To Help or Ostracize? the Victims of Unexploded Ordnance from the Vietnam War in Northern Lao

Goto Daisaku

Hongsakhone Soulixay

Ichihashi Masaru

Ito Takahiro

Yoshida Yuichiro

IDEC DP2 Series

Lao PDR inherited from the Vietnam war the most unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination per capita in the world. Casualties still amount and even the survivors suffer serious disability. Recently, villagers are seriously injured and disabled by UXO in a village called Phonxay in northern Lao near the Vietnam border. As a small step in devouring causation between the heritage of Vietnam war and the affected people’s livelihood and wellbeing, this short paper aims to identify a causal relationship between UXO impacts and intra-village inter-household trade of locally produced products by using primary data obtained in this UXO-contaminated remote village. The paper identifies that the UXO-affected households give and receive significantly smaller amount of locally-produced commodities to/from others. This negative impact of disability on within-community trade suggests that, in the UXO-affected village it is difficult to expect autonomous cooperation and support for those disabled villagers from others; in other words, they are economically ostracized.

JEL codes: R11

JEL codes: N45

Unexploded ordnance

Vietnam war

Lao PDR

Economics [ 330 ]

eng

広島大学大学院国際協力研究科