Vietnamese and US descendants of those exposed to Agent Orange continue to face diseases and congenital anomalies.
Today marks 50 years since the end of the American War in Vietnam, which killed an estimated 3.3 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, tens of thousands of Laotians and more than 58,000 U.S. service members. But for many Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people; Vietnamese Americans; and U.S. Vietnam veterans and their descendants, the impacts of the war never ended. They continue to suffer the devastating consequences of Agent Orange, an herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military that contained dioxin, the deadliest chemical known to humankind.
The United States used Agent Orange as a weapon of war. From 1961-1971, the U.S. military sprayed toxins that contained large quantities of dioxin in order to destroy food supplies and improve visibility for the U.S. military by killing broad swathes of vegetation throughout southern Vietnam. As a result, many people have been born with congenital anomalies — disabling changes in the formation of the spinal cord, limbs, heart, palate, and more. This remains the largest deployment of herbicidal warfare in history.
In the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Nixon administration promised to contribute $3 billion for compensation and postwar reconstruction of Vietnam. But that promise remains unfulfilled. Although the U.S. has funded the cleanup of two of the largest dioxin-contaminated “hotspots” and there has been some remuneration for U.S. veterans, there has been none for the Vietnamese people, the intended victims of the deadly spraying.
Legislative Package Provides Compensation for Vietnamese and U.S. Veteran Victims
In order to achieve justice for Agent Orange victims, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced a legislative package on April 28. The Agent Orange Relief Act of 2025 provides for medical care and related assistance for Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange; provides additional environmental remediation for hotspots; and orders a health assessment and assistance to affected Vietnamese American communities.
Tlaib also introduced The Victims of Agent Orange Act of 2025, which provides benefits for children of male U.S. veterans who served in Vietnam affected by congenital anomalies; these children are unprotected by current law, which only covers congenital anomalies for children of women veterans. The bill also supports greater research into Agent Orange-related health issues and directs a health assessment and provision of assistance for affected Vietnamese American communities.
“Together, these two bills serve as an act of repair for the profound harms caused by the United States’ use of Agent Orange and other herbicides. Agent Orange exposure continues to negatively affect the lives of American veterans, Vietnamese people, Vietnamese Americans, and their children,” Tlaib stated in a press release. “The lives of many victims are cut short, and others live with disease, disabilities, and pain, which are often untreated or unrecognized. As we mark 50 years after the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam, it is time to meet our moral and legal obligations to heal the wounds inflicted by these atrocities.”
The legislative package is co-sponsored by Representatives André Carson (D-Indiana), Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Lateefah Simon (D-California) and Shri Thanedar (D-Michigan). The bills are endorsed by the Quincy Institute, Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC), CommonDefense.us, Minnesota Peace Project and Action Corps.
Tlaib told Truthout, “For there to be any justice for the war crimes committed in Vietnam, the United States must devote itself to repair: by cleaning these ongoing Agent Orange contamination sites, investing in the medical care of those affected, and removing unexploded ordnance.”
VAORRC, for which I serve as co-coordinator, assisted Tlaib in drafting the bills. In the congresswoman’s press release, Susan Schnall and Ngo Thanh Nhan, also co-coordinators of VAORRC, thanked Tlaib for introducing this important legislation.
Schnall, president of Veterans For Peace, said:
The United States government used Agent Orange as an instrument of war from 1961-1971 on Vietnam, its people, and American soldiers on the ground. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, we celebrate these two pieces of legislation that promote healing for the American people and the Vietnamese people harmed, and cleanup of the contaminated land in Vietnam.
Ngo stated: “The Southeast Asian communities have victims of Agent Orange and were invisible to the public so far. These are very important acts for our communities in the U.S. to support and it takes great courage for Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to show this example of solidarity.”
Between 2,100,000 and 4,800,000 Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian people, and tens of thousands of Americans were exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin during the spraying operations. Many other Vietnamese people were or continue to be exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin through contact with the environment and food that was contaminated. Many offspring of those who were exposed have congenital anomalies, developmental disabilities, and other diseases. Second, third and fourth generation victims continue to suffer.
The Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes 19 diseases and illnesses to be associated with the spraying and use of Agent Orange by the U.S. military in Vietnam. They include AL Amyloidosis, bladder cancer, chronic B-cell leukemia, chloracne, type 2 diabetes mellitus, high blood pressure (hypertension), Hodgkin’s disease, hypothyroidism, ischemic heart disease, monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), multiple myeloma, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, Parkinsonism, acute and sub-acute peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas.
Testimony of Agent Orange Victims
In 2009, I served as one of seven judges from three continents on the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange in Paris. The panel heard two days of testimony from 27 witnesses, including Vietnamese and U.S. veteran victims, journalists and scientists. Some had visible disabilities due to their exposure to Agent Orange/dioxin.
Mai Giang Vu, who was exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals in the jungle. His sons were unable to walk or function normally. Their limbs “curled up” and they could only crawl. By the age of 18, they were bedridden. One died at age 23, the other at 25.
Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese woman who worked in Vietnam as a war correspondent. She was there when the U.S. military began spraying chemical defoliants and a large cloud of the agent enveloped her. Shortly after her daughter was born, the child’s skin began shedding. She could not tolerate physical contact with anyone. The child never grew. She remained 6.6 pounds – her birth weight – until she died at age 17 months. Tran’s second daughter suffers from alpha thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder rarely seen in Asia. Tran saw a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds. There are victims who have never stood up. They creep and barely lift their heads.
Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. After refusing to serve a third tour, Mizo was court-martialed, received a dishonorable discharge and spent two-and-a-half years in prison. Before his death from Agent Orange-related maladies, Mizo helped found the Friendship Village where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment.
Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal Agent Orange article in Nature, testified that “This is the largest unstudied [unnatural] environmental disaster in the world.”
Although a Bionetics study from 1965 showed that dioxin caused many birth defects in animal experiments, the U.S. military suppressed those findings. The results of the study were leaked in 1969 but the spraying of Agent Orange continued until 1971.
The tribunal found that “The damages caused to the land and forests, water supply, and communities and the ecosystems can legitimately be called an ecocide, as the forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded, and may either never grow back or take 50 to 200 years to regenerate.”
The Unfulfilled U.S. Promise
In 2004, U.S. veteran and Vietnamese victims sued the chemical companies that knowingly manufactured Agent Orange and other herbicides, which they knew contained a lethal amount of dioxin. The victims were prohibited from suing the U.S. government because of sovereign immunity. Despite agreeing to compensate U.S. veterans in an earlier lawsuit for some illnesses caused by their exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides, the U.S. government and the chemical companies claimed before the courts, and to this day, that no evidence supports a connection between exposure and disease.
Efforts by veterans’ groups and others to take care of U.S. vets produced a compensation scheme administered by the Veterans Administration. It annually pays out billions of dollars to veterans who can demonstrate that they were in a contaminated part of Vietnam and have an illness associated with Agent Orange exposure.
Shamefully, the Vietnamese people who were exposed to Agent Orange on a scale unheard of in modern warfare have been denied recompense.
After the 2009 Paris tribunal, while I was president of the National Lawyers Guild, I participated in a delegation to Vietnam to present our findings to President Nguyen Minh Triet. I told him I was baffled that even as U.S. bombs were falling on the Vietnamese people, they made a distinction between the U.S. government and the American people. The president responded, “We fought the forces of aggression, but we always reserved our love for the people of America … because we knew they always supported us.” He was referring to the powerful U.S. antiwar movement in which I was a proud participant.
The United States and Vietnam normalized relations 30 years ago following a 19-year trade embargo on the latter. “It’s taken decades to build the current level of mutual trust and cooperation between the United States and Vietnam,” George Black, author of The Long Reckoning, an examination of U.S.-Vietnam relations since the war, told The New York Times. “And the whole process has been underpinned by our willingness to deal with the worst humanitarian legacies.”
But Donald Trump has started a new war on Vietnam, a tariff war, imposing a 46 percent tariff rate (temporarily on hold as the two countries “negotiate”). The U.S. and Vietnam conduct $160 billion in annual commerce. And while the Vietnamese people commemorate 50 years since the end of the American war in their country, the Trump administration has ordered its senior diplomats in Vietnam to avoid participation in the commemoration events.
Just compensation for victims of Agent Orange is a moral imperative. People who support Tlaib’s legislation should contact their congressional representatives and urge them to sign on as additional co-sponsors.
This article first appeared on Truthout.
