Penelope Faulkner is Vice-president of Quê Me : Action for Democracy in Vietnam, and Deputy editor of the organization's Vietnamese-language magazine Quê Me (Homeland), a journal on democracy, human rights and culture published in Paris since 1975. She is also Vice-president for International Relations of the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, a Paris-based monitoring organisation established in 1976, and Chargée de Mission for Vietnam at the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), France's largest and most long-standing human rights organisation. She has actively participated in organizing human rights campaigns, notably the "Ship for Vietnam" campaign launched by Quê Me in 1978, which chartered a rescue ship to save boat people in distress on the South China seas. Ms Faulkner is also International Relations Officer of the International Buddhist Information Bureau, the overseas mouthpiece of the dissident Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.

A specialist in Vietnamese language and literature, Penelope Faulkner has translated Vietnamese poetry and prose and compiled extensive reports on Vietnamese human rights issues, including freedom of religion, worker rights, freedom of the press, the rights of the child, women's rights, freedom of the press etc. She is consultant to journalists, writers and broadcasters on Vietnamese issues (e.g. with British producers David Attenborough and Michael MacIntyre on the production of "Artists in Exile", a BBC television film on the life and culture of Vietnam in the series "Spirit of Asia").

Ms Faulkner writes articles and short stories in Vietnamese under her pen name Y Lan. She is author of a best-selling book of short stories, "Quê Nha" which is in its ninth printing. She also writes and broadcasts in Vietnamese for the BBC Vietnamese Service and the VOA. She is the Paris correspondent for the Vietnamese Service of Radio Free Asia which broadcasts daily to Vietnam.