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

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.This work is partly supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research #16H05704