Negotiating triple roles as activists, organizational managers and researchers inside the emerging LGBT movement in Vietnam

The Viet Pride movement and the campaign to legalise same-sex marriage in the last four years has made Vietnam a phenomenon in the global movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. 

Though same sex marriage was not approved in the amended Law on Marriage and Family, rapid development of the movement in only a few years in the current political regime is significant and meaningful not only for the LGBT rights movement but also for the civil society movement in Vietnam in general.

Though Vietnam has changed significantly after Doi Moi, the economic reform process that began in 1986, the current political regime is still reluctant to acknowledge the existence or support the development of civil society organisations (CSOs).

It is in this complex context that the Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population (CCIHP) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) conducted a study to understand how LGBT CSOs can affect legal and social change with regards to the laws that regulate sexual norms and unions in Vietnam.