Addressing War Legacies and Reconciliation: How Philanthropies and NGOs Inspire Progress

2025 marked fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, and efforts to address the legacies of war and support reconciliation have become the cornerstone of an increasingly robust US-Vietnam relationship. The comprehensive strategic partnership that now exists between the US and Vietnam was not inevitable, but rather the result of significant effort from a broad range of actors to reconcile and forge a forward-looking partnership. This discussion considers the key role that philanthropic institutions and other non-government stakeholders played in addressing the legacies of war pre-reconciliation and during the early reconciliation period, and how they helped inspire and catalyze U.S. government prioritization of war legacies and reconciliation efforts.