Efforts made to care for the needy ahead of Tet

President Tran Dai Quang has signed a decision presenting gifts to people who made significant contributions to the national revolutionary cause on the occasion of the traditional Lunar New Year (Tet) 2018.

Gifts worth 400,000 VND (17.72 USD) and 200,000 VND (8.86 USD) each will be given to those who participated in revolutionary activities up to the August Revolution (August 19, 1945), Heroic Mothers, Heros of the People’s Armed Forces, Labour Heros during the Resistance War, war invalids, and fallen soldiers’ relatives. Sick soldiers and veterans affected by toxic chemicals are also among the beneficiaries.

Total expenditure for the presents is estimated at more than 386 billion VND (17.1 million USD) from the State budget.

The central province of Nghe An has decided to support the needy in the locality with 50.5 billion VND ahead of the Lunar New Year (Tet).

In the upcoming holiday, the province will not let off fireworks to save money for the poor. Currently, Nghe An has over 80,000 poor households, mostly residing in mountainous and border areas. In 2017, the province built 541 new houses and upgraded 299 others for the poor.

Meanwhile, the central province of Quang Tri has also launched a number of activities to ensure a warm festival for all poor workers in the province. This year, Tet bonus for local workers in the locality varies from 200,000 VND to 72 million VND. Many small firms have no plan to offer bonus for workers. Along with keeping a close watch on businesses’ implementation of salary and bonus regulations, local authorities have also held dialogues with the firms to deal with difficulties facing them and the workers.

Last year, the provincial Trade Union supported over 4,000 workers with underprivileged circumstances with over 2 billion VND, while building 45 new houses worth 1.79 billion VND to the needy. Quang Tri now has about 35,000 labourers, many of whom face difficulties.

At the same time, the Management Board of the southern province of Binh Phuoc reported that more than 100 enterprises have announced Tet bonus for workers at average 5.2 million VND each. Trade unions at all levels have built plans to support workers, including free travel assistance and Tet gifts.

Front leader gives Tet gifts to poor households

President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee Tran Thanh Man visited and presented gifts to poor households and welfare policy beneficiaries in the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang and city of Can Tho on January 20, ahead of the Lunar New Year (Tet) festival.

The beneficiaries include 100 poor households and welfare policy beneficiaries in Thanh Xuan commune, Chau Thanh A district, Hau Giang province; and 200 other families in Co Do district, Can Tho city. Each gift package includes 1 million VND in cash and five kg of rice.

Speaking with local residents, Man detailed the nation’s socio-economic development in 2017, saying that despite natural disasters, floods causing huge damages and losses, under the sound leadership of the Party and the Government, the country fulfilled all socio-economic targets, with economic growth reaching 6.81 percent.

He urged local authorities to take good care of their residents, particularly poor households and welfare policy beneficiaries, particularly in terms of housing, health care, education and production.

Man expressed his hope that the households will follow the policies and laws of the Party and State, contributing to the development of their localities.

On the occasion, the VFF leader and Can Tho officials visited and presented gifts to the wife of a martyr, Do Thi Phuong, in Thoi Hiep village, Dong Thang commune; and pensioner Le Tan Phuong, 91, in Co Do township, Co Do district of Can Tho city.

Overseas Vietnamese communities gather to celebrate Tet

Vietnamese people in Indonesia on January 23 gathered at the Vietnamese Embassy in the country to celebrate the upcoming Lunar New Year (Tet), the year of the Dog.

Addressing the event, Ambassador Hoang Anh Tuan reviewed the development of the country during the past year, as well as the Vietnam-Indonesia cooperative strategic partnership, highlighting delegation exchanges at all levels, participation in multilateral and bilateral forums and boosting bilateral ties in trade, investment and culture.

He lauded the solidarity among the Vietnamese community in Indonesia, hoping that they, including Vietnam’s representative offices, will continue contributing to the nation’s development and Vietnam – Indonesia ties.

The Embassy of Vietnam in Mozambique held a similar get-together in Maputo to celebrate Tet.

Speaking at the event, Ambassador to Mozambique Nguyen Van Trung highlighted the traditional friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Mozambique, particularly in economics, trade and investment.

The Vietnam Buddhist Association was established in Mozambique in 2017, the first of its kind in Africa, Trung noted.

The Vietnam Buddhist Sangha will hold the Vesak Festival in Mozambique, Trung said, adding that construction of a Vietnamese pagoda will be started on an area of more than 4 hectares in Maputo in 2018.

Tet gifts sent to Truong Sa soldiers, people

Four ships carrying officers, soldiers, journalists as well as New Year gifts departed from Cam Ranh military port,   in the central province of Khanh Hoa, on January 6 for Truong Sa archipelago.

As scheduled, the ships will drop in 21 islands and 33 islets in the district, delivering gifts to people and soldiers stationed there on the occasion of the upcoming Lunar New Year (Tet).

As many as 105 reporters from media companies across the country were on board the ships.

Their writings about historical sites and daily life on the islands will contribute to affirming the sovereignty of Vietnam over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes, the country’s exclusive economic zone, continental shelf, and other sea and island areas.

So, Tet 2018 is coming to Vietnam. Let’s wish for the people and the country all the bests, especially on human rights care like those above./.

Wearing a red t-shirt and waving the national flag, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam joined the crowds to celebrate the historic win.

Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam surprised football fans when he was spotted among huge crowds celebrating the national team's dramatic victory over Qatar in the semifinal of the Asian Football Confederation Under-23 (AFC U23) Championship on Tuesday night.

Like every other Vietnamese fan present around Hoan Kiem Lake in downtown Hanoi, deputy PM Dam was driving around the lake sporting a red t-shirt with two mini Vietnamese flags attached to his motorbike as the crowd cheered.

Dancing and selfies with the crowd followed as many recognized the deputy PM. 

Deputy PM Dam previously emphasized that Vietnamese football should be "beautiful, honest and precise", meaning players need to be trained not only on strategy but also morality, culture, health and fitness. 

Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc personally called the team to congratulate them right after the game, emphasizing how much the win means to the country. 

The unprecedented win has earned the national U23 team a wave of accolades. So far, government agencies and businesses have pledged rewards of at least VND16 billion ($708,800).

The national U23 team has rewritten the history of Vietnamese football, becoming one of the first two Southeast Asian teams to qualify for the quarterfinals of the U23 Asian Cup along with Malaysia. While the latter was subsequently eliminated, the Vietnamese team has kept the dream alive by defeating Iraq in the quarterfinal and Qatar in the semifinal. 

Vietnam will face Uzbekistan in the final on January 27 after the latter defeated South Korea 4-1 in extra time. 

Facebook has admitted that sometimes, it might actually be bad for democracy. Facebook is right about that. However, I’m not sure that the social media platform really understands why this is the case.

The admission comes in a series of official blog posts by Facebook insiders about what effect social media can have on democracy. “I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can‘t,” wrote Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook product manager. He continued: “....we have a moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible.”

First off, it’s important to understand the political and media context in which Facebook has felt forced to make these comments. That context is alleged ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election through the promotion of political ads designed to take advantage of social division. Facebook is responding to a not small cohort of Americans who genuinely believe that Russian Facebook ads are destroying democracy. The second thing to understand is that while Facebook’s admission may sound like noble self-reflection, the truth is that what Facebook says and what it means are two very different things.

There is a temptation among some to believe that the social media giant is a neutral actor that cares about fairness and democracy and that it is doing its very best to ensure it has a positive effect on democracy. This could not be further from the truth.

If Facebook’s recent history is anything to go by, the California-based company is not actually a big fan of democracy at all. Even before Facebook decided to become selectively outraged about the ubiquitousness of propaganda and ‘fake news’ on its platform, it was already engaging in political censorship. Take this 2016 story in which Facebook employees admit to suppressing conservative news on the platform, for example. Not only that, but employees were told to artificially “inject”Facebook-approved stories into the trending news module when they weren’t popular enough to make it there organically. The employees were also told not to include news about Facebook itself into the trending category.

Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation,” Michael Nunez wrote for Gizmodo. With that kind of ability and willingness to manipulate, Facebook itself possesses huge potential to affect political outcomes, far more than some Russian ads.

Facebook has said it believes that simply adding the ability to click an“I voted” sticker can increase actual voter turnout significantly through a combination of simply seeing the sticker and feeling the peer pressure to vote if your friends have done so. This is supposed to be one of the good things Facebook has done for democracy, but there are so many ways that Facebook could use this kind of thing to surreptitiously promote its own political agenda.

What if Facebook were to artificially push certain news stories in specific locations – say, where an election was taking place – and then add the “I voted” button for users in that area. Or alternatively chose not to add that button for certain races where a lower turnout might be deemed a good thing.

What Facebook means when it says it is worried about how its platform is being used is that it’s not entirely comfortable with the fact that it can’t fully control the political narrative. Even Facebook believes it has created a monster. It would like to control what our impressionable minds might see and read – lest we fall victim to unapproved opinions or ideologies. But Facebook also knows that such control is not entirely possible – and therein lies their true crisis.

Even the steps Facebook has taken to address alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election are questionable. In his blog post, Chakrabarti writes that the platform has “made it easier to report false news” and has “taken steps in partnership with third-party fact checkers to rank these stories lower” in the news feed. Once the fact-checkers identify a story as fake, Facebook can reduce impressions of that story by 80%, he says. But who are these third-party fact checkers? Facebook doesn’t tell us.

“We’re also working to make it harder for bad actors to profit from false news,” he writes. But again, we don’t get a definition of bad actor, either. One assumes Russia is the bad actor referred to – but if Facebook was truly concerned about government propaganda and its effect on election outcomes, the crackdown would surely not be limited to one government. Are some governments bad actors and other governments good actors? Is some propaganda good and some bad? Are some sock-puppet accounts acceptable and others not? Can we get a breakdown?

Facebook has also been kind enough to help users figure out whether they were unfortunate enough to have come into contact with any Russian-linked posts. It’s part of their “action plan against foreign interference”. Again, we might benefit from a definition here of “foreign interference.” Facebook is an international platform, thus the potential exists for elections to be ‘interfered’ with through Facebook all over the world, not just in the United States. Does Facebook’s fight against foreign interference incorporate all those efforts equally? This kind of information would be really helpful, if Facebook would be kind enough to provide it.

Facebook is not alone in its mission to rid the world of nasty Russian propaganda. Twitter is at it, too. Last week, the company sent out emails to users warning them that they may have come into contact with Russian propaganda on the microblogging platform. Curiously, no similar warnings have been sent to users who came into contact with American propaganda online – despite the fact that we’ve known for years that the US government has been using sock-puppet accounts to spread its own propaganda and misinformation online.

Google has also dipped its toes in the water. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., said recently that Google was trying to create special algorithms and“engineer the systems” to make RT’s content less visible on the search engine.

Media coverage of Facebook’s comments was fairly uniform. Most outlets have been treating the blog posts as a ‘see, we told you!’ moment, focusing entirely on the Russia angle but ignoring the many other ways in which Facebook has itself attempted to corrupt the free flow of information and manipulated its users. The reporting is almost sympathetic: Poor innocent Facebook is coming to terms with the fact that sometimes bad things happen online.

The Washington Post called Facebook blog posts the “most critical self-assessment yet.” Another piece in the Post opines on Facebook’s “year of reckoning.” Reuters reported that the sharing of “misleading headlines” became a “global issue” after accusations that Russia had used Facebook to interfere in the 2016 election. The implication is almost that misleading headlines are some kind of new phenomenon and Facebook is out there on the frontlines of the battle.  

Facebook wants you to stay mad about Russian ads. It wants you to believe that its democracy-loving executives are truly sorry and doing all they can to make the platform as good for democracy as possible. What they don’t want is for us to examine their own practices too closely. But that’s exactly what we should be doing – instead of congratulating them on their disingenuous foray into self-reflection.

The “Report on Out-of-school children 2016: Vietnam country study” was announced in Hanoi on January 23rd by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Vietnam.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Nghia, MOET Vice Minister delivered speech at the event. (Photo: H.H)

The event was attended by Ms. Nguyen Thi Nghia, MOET Vice Minister, Mr. Ta Ngoc Tri, Deputy Director, Primary Education  Department, the Ministry of Education and Training; Nguyen Dinh Manh, Deputy Director, Office of the Ministry of Education and Training; Mr. Akihiro FUSHIMI, Education Specialist, UNICEF Regional Office for East Asia and the Pacific and deputies from the relevant Departments under the MOET, the Department of Child Affairs under the Ministry of Labor, War-Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ethnic Council and the Committee on Culture, Education, Young People and Children under the National Assembly, General Statistics Office, UN agencies in Vietnam, experts of UNICEF and UNESCO in the region.

The total number of out-of-school children from 5-14 has been reduced significantly and the greatest reduction was observed among five-year-old pre-primary school children.

The study showed that the percentage of ethnic minority children who have never attended school or who dropped out (out of school children) in 2014 was significantly less than in 2009. The Khmer and the Mong made significant progress over the period, but they still had the highest out-of-school rates of all the ethnic minority groups. It also pointed out a large disparity in the out-of-school rates for the poorest and the richest households, and the difference increased with the level of education. For the 5-year-old, the percentage of out-of-school children from the poorest households was three times higher than those from the richest households. 

This difference increased to 5.5 times higher for the children of primary school age and 10 times higher for the children of lower secondary school age. Children of primary and lower secondary school age in rural areas were more disadvantaged than those in urban areas in all the regions, especially the children in the rural parts of the mountainous Northern Midlands and the Central Highlands. Migrant groups consistently perform worse than non-migrant groups and the difference also increases with age. Migrant families have a higher rate of out of school children aged 5 than that of non-migrant families, specifically at 1.2 times at the age of 5, 1.6 times at primary school age and 1.7 times at lower secondary age.

The report is the updated version of “the Report on Out-of-school children: Vietnam country study 2013” published by the MOET. Following the guidance of the Out-of-School Children Conceptual and Methodological Framework (CMF) initiated by UNICEF and UNESCO Institute for Statistics, with technical support from UNICEF Vietnam. 

The study looks at the situation of out-of-school between the age of 5 and 14 years old, and the children attending primary and lower secondary school but at risk of dropping out. It analyzes barriers and bottlenecks from both the demand side - children and their parents and the supply side including education system as well as other related agencies at all levels. Demand side economic barriers are associated with poverty which restricts their affordability of educational costs. Supply side barriers concern bottlenecks related to infrastructure and resources, teachers, education management and other systemic issues such as learning programme, data system, governance, capacity and financing mechanism. It also proposes recommendations to remove those barriers.

Addressing the event, MOET Vice Minister Nguyen Thi Nghia said “Vietnam has made significant progress in universalisation of primary and lower secondary education and has achieved MDGs in education. The country has committed to the Sustainable Development Goals in Education. In this context, this report provides evidence that help improve policy, legislation and education management to overcome the barriers and ensure that the right to education is realized for all children

“Given the disparities that remain, I strongly encourage the Ministry of Education and Training, provincial DOETs, related ministries and development partners to make the best use of this valuable dataset and to translate the analysis into critical policy revisions, targeted management actions and improved practices in public finance management in education to reduce education costs and address other barriers in order to accelerate access to inclusive education for those disadvantaged groups of children who lag behind as evidenced in the study report”, said Yoshimi Nishino, UNICEF Vietnam Acting Deputy Representative.

The report utilizes the data from the Intercensal Population and Housing Survey 2014 as the single source of data. Out-of-school children in this report are analyzed by different characteristics, including age, gender, ethnicity, urban/rural residence, regions, income quintiles and migration and also multiple variables. 

Protesters hold up placards during the Women's March in London on January 21, 2018 as part of a global day of protests, a year to the day since Donald Trump took office as US president. Hundreds of people gathered outside Downing Street in London to voice their frustration at sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women.

From London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid to Los Angeles, New York and Washington, thousands march down the streets to protest against Trump and sexism. 

Women's rights protesters took to the streets in European cities on Sunday to voice their frustration at sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women.

Hundreds of people gathered in London chanting "Time's up! Time's up!", as similar demonstrations took place across the continent.

"I am here today to say time is up on violence against women and girls all across the world," Kiyleigh, 29, told AFP at the march outside Prime Minister Theresa May's Downing Street office.

"I work with women who suffer from domestic abuse, sexual abuse from male perpetrators and I don't want to see that anymore," she said. 

Protesters also waved placards reading "Don't touch my rights" and "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries".

Social campaigner Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, was among the speakers.

"'No' means 'no'. Sexual harassment is not OK. Abuse is not OK. People have to respect what women say," said Liberty Folker, 27, who came with her dog Gwen and held a placard reading: "Even this dog knows 'no' means 'no'".

"Every woman I know has experienced some kind of harassment or abuse or rape. I myself have and I don't want that for any woman anywhere, not just here but all across the world," she told AFP.

'Grab 'em by the midterms' 

In Berlin, a few dozen people gathered by the U.S. embassy at the Brandenburg Gate and waved slogans in English including "Resist", "Stand, unite, fight" and "Time's up: Impeach now", referring to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Others denounced Trump's remarks about women, one held a placard reading: "Grab 'em by the patriarchy".

As protesters moved through Berlin’s government district, the crowd grew to around 1,000, including expatriate Americans and a large male minority. 

Many parents brought their school-age children, who carried signs with slogans including "Love trumps hate" and "Equality for all".

Speakers encouraged Americans abroad to sign up for absentee ballots for the U.S. midterm congressional elections in November.

A popular poster read: "Grab 'em by the midterms".

Meanwhile in Spain about 200 people, mostly women, gathered in Plaza Isabel II in downtown Madrid. 

They chanted slogans and held signs in Spanish and English decrying Trump and encouraging a global feminist "revolution".

"We stand here united to find our way towards equality and to demand our rights", said Cristina Rodriguez-Carretera, a 40-year-old university professor in the United States on a visit to her native Spain. 

"We are more united than we think," she added, noting that women feel under attack by Trump's constant "misogyny".

In the United States, protestors took to the streets en masse on Saturday, hoisting anti-Trump placards, banging drums and donning pink hats for a second Women's March opposing the president -- one year to the day since his inauguration.

Hundreds of thousands of marchers assembled in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Boston and other cities nationwide, many donning the famous pink knit "pussy hats" -- a reference to Trump's audiotaped boast of his license to grope women without repercussions.

They were joined by actresses including Whoopi Goldberg in New York and Natalie Portman in Los Angeles.

Other demonstrations were held elsewhere in Europe including Paris.

The inequality crisis is worsening, according to a new study by global charity Oxfam, which found that the world’s richest 42 people own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 percent worldwide.

The annual report showed that 2017 saw the biggest increase in the number of billionaires in history, with new ones created at a rate of one every two days. Their wealth has increased by 13 percent a year on average in the decade from 2006 to 2015. 

The fortunes of the super-rich increased by $762 billion in just 12 months to March 2017 which is enough to end extreme poverty seven times over. Nine out of 10 of the world's 2,043 billionaires were men.

“Eighty two percent of the new wealth created has gone to [the] top 1 percent, while 0 percent has gone to the world’s poorest 50 percent,” said the report.

According to Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam, the statistics signal that “something is very wrong with the global economy.”

“The concentration of extreme wealth at the top is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a system that is failing the millions of hard-working people on poverty wages who make our clothes and grow our food,” he said.

Oxfam‘s executive director Winnie Byanyima blamed “tax dodging” as a major cause of global inequality and urged leaders to crack down on tax havens and inject money into education, healthcare and jobs for young people.

“[It] reveals how our economies are rewarding wealth rather than the hard work of millions of people,” Byanyima told Reuters, adding “The few at the top get richer and richer and the millions at the bottom are trapped in poverty wages.

The APPF made its debut on March 15, 1993 with the participation of 27 member parliaments, including those in some powers such as the United States (US), Russia, Japan and China. The forum works towards the aim of building trust among member parliaments via the enhancement of dialogues between parliamentarians in the Asia-Pacific region, thereby contributing to maintaining peace, stability, sustainable development and prosperity for the whole region. In the current context of extensive globalisation, together with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the APPF has demonstrated its role as a crucial dialogue and cooperation mechanism among the countries in the region.

The Vietnamese NA has been a member of the APPF since 1995. Being deeply aware of the importance of the cohesion between Vietnam and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the Vietnamese parliament has always been actively and responsibly involved in the APPF’s activities.

In January 2005, the Vietnamese NA successfully organised the 13th Annual Meeting of the APPF in Ha Long city, Quang Ninh province. The APPF-26 takes place as the Vietnamese NA’s external relations, especially at regional and international multilateral forums, has reaped positive results, contributing to maintaining a peaceful environment and taking advantage of favourable conditions in order to develop the country; safeguard national independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity; and constantly enhance the position of the nation.

Alongside the APPF, the Vietnamese NA has also been proactively, actively and responsibly involved in major inter-parliamentary cooperation forums, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA), the Francophone Parliamentary Assembly (APF) and the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA).

Within the framework of the APPF-26, participants will discuss ideas concerning the issues of politics-security, economy-trade, developmental cooperation in the region and the APPF’s role, aiming towards the sustainable development and common prosperity of the region. The APPF-26 will orientate a vision for the APPF, helping to strengthen diplomatic relations between the Vietnam NA and parliaments in the region and in the world, whilst contributing to facilitating the role of parliaments toward the APEC cooperation and promoting the results of the APEC Economic Leaders’ Week 2017 on the parliamentary channel.

The hosting of the APPF-26 aims to affirms Vietnam’s consistent foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development; diversification and multilateralism of international relations; active and proactive international integration; and being a trusted partner and a responsible member of the international community. The APPF-26 is a significant highlight in foreign affairs of the 14th NA, offering an opportunity to expand and strengthen diplomatic ties between Vietnam and many other important partners.

This is the second time that the Vietnamese NA has hosted the APPF’s annual meeting, which has contributed to transmitting a strong message and an image of a renovated, dynamic, active and responsible Vietnamese parliament. Through the APPF-26, Vietnam continues to promote itself to international friends as a peaceful and stable country with dynamic development as well as creative and hospitable people.

With Vietnam’s constantly strengthened position, together with the support and trust from international friends, there is a strong belief that the Vietnamese NA will successfully organise the APPF-26, thereby affirming the country’s position and prestige in the international arena and demonstrating the commitments of the Vietnamese NA as well as the forum’s member parliaments towards developing a stable, dynamic and cohesive Asia-Pacific community for peace, innovation and sustainable development.

Vietnam’s white book on human rights was released on the afternoon of January 18 at a monthly press conference held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The white book is available in three versions of Vietnamese, English and French.

The document provides updated information about the laws, policies, efforts and achievements of the State of Vietnam in ensuring human rights, once more confirming the fact that Vietnam has closely followed international norms in ensuring the protection and promotion of human rights of its people.

Earlier, in 2005, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam published a book titled “Achievements in protection and promotion of human rights in Vietnam” providing an overall and systematic view of the legal system, institutions, policies, efforts and achievements of the State of Vietnam in protecting human rights.

This time, the white book consists of four chapters, presenting information showing restless efforts of Vietnam in perfecting its legal system and legal enforcement in ensuring the rights of the people. The rights of the people include the right to equality and non-discrimination in front of the law; the right to privacy; the right to freedom of travel and residence; the right to freedom of assembly; the right to vote and stand for election, etc.

The Vietnamese people's living standards has been improved.

The document stresses the achievements of Vietnam in ensuring the implementation of the rights to freedom of belief and religion for its people. As it is estimated, about 95% of the Vietnamese people lead their belief and religious life, including more than 24 million followers of different religions (accounting for about 27% of the whole population), increasing by nearly 7 million followers compared to 2003. Apart from that, Vietnam has increasingly been expanding its participation in international religious activities and provides favorable conditions for religious organizations in the country to enhance international exchanges and connection.

The white book also underlines the vivid manifestation of freedom of speech, and press and information in Vietnam as the country has witnessed the “rapid development in the forms of mass media and the rich contents of information.” The economic growth of Vietnam has also been maintained at stable rates over the past time, increasingly improving people’s living standards, reducing poverty rate, promoting social equality, contributing to protecting the rights to enjoying socio-economic advances and to the implementation of human rights in other realms.

As Vietnam served as a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the 2014-2016 term, it has actively and substantially participated in international forums on human rights. The country has not only sought to ensure its people’s rights to freedom in all aspects in line with international norms, but also practically contributed to the shared goal of promoting human rights at the national, regional and global levels, the white book reads.

Three versions of the white book

The achievements in the protection and promotion of human rights of Vietnam have recently proved tireless efforts of the State of Vietnam in building a socialist rule-of-law State, which considers the people the goal, the driving force and also the center of all policies for the development of the country.

As a developing country, Vietnam is still facing a good number of difficulties and challenges. In the coming time, Vietnam will focus on overcoming challenges in the realm of protection and promotion of human rights stressing the following seven priorities: 1) continuing to improve the legal system on the principle of promoting the human factor to ensure better implementation of fundamental rights and freedoms of the people and ensuring the national legal system is in harmony with the norms of international law; 2) promoting socio-economic development to foster conditions and increase resources for poverty reduction and improve the quality of people’s physical and spiritual life; 3) increasing access to various types of social security services for the people; 4) improving quality of education to develop human resources, including education on human rights to raise people’s awareness of and law enforcement agencies’ capacity in this issue; 5) actively promoting gender equality, considering it an important factor to build sustainable human resources and increase quality of life for the whole society; 6) taking good care of people’s health to ensure a healthy society and access to comprehensive health care services, both physically and mentally; 7) seeking to strengthen cooperation with all countries, agencies and organizations related to human rights.

The while book affirms, “Building on the recent achievements, which were appreciated by the people in the country and international friends, with the determination and the spirit of the Vietnamese people and open dialogue and cooperation with other countries and international organizations on both bilateral and multilateral channels in the field of human rights, the State of Vietnam has been and will strive to achieve the objective of better ensuring the rights and fundamental freedoms of citizens in a law-governed state while joining hands with the international community to address regional and global issues related to human rights.”