Facilitating Community-Led Research in Challenging Contexts

Across the Mekong region, communities – Indigenous communities in particular –  face multiple threats to their human rights from companies engaged in natural resource extraction on or near their lands. While international norms and national laws require that companies involved in land-based investment undertake stakeholder engagement in the context of, this is rarely done well, if it is done at all. 

Just Ground has partnered with EarthRights International to provide training on strategies and participatory research tools to support community-led responses to these abuses. The goal is to facilitate communities in harnessing their inherent strengths to gather information, form a position, and advocate for their environmental and human rights – even in contexts where civil society is highly restricted.

As part of this ongoing work, in October and November 2025, Just Ground and EarthRights International convened community organizers and human rights defenders from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam for two separate workshops on facilitation of community-led research. 

The workshops deepened the facilitation and data collection skills of participants, and invited them to grapple with complex questions about community agency, ethics, safety, and knowledge production. This brief, co-published with EarthRights International, captures the key learnings, challenges, and strategies that emerged from discussions to serve as a reference for facilitators of community-led research across the Mekong Region.

Read the report here.