UNICEF project helps promote children’s rights in Vietnam

Vietnamese children

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will help Vietnam build a legal environment with comprehensive policies which are able to protect children and ensure their rights through the “Protecting and Promoting the Rights of Children in Vietnam” project, launched in Hanoi on August 16.

The project is financed by the UNICEF’s non-refundable official development assistance (ODA) worth more than 17 million USD. It will be carried out during 2018-2021 in Lao Cai, Dien Bien, Kon Tum, Gia Lai and Dong Thap provinces, and Da Nang city.

It aims to promote law enforcement and programmes to assure the implementation of children’s rights in Vietnam as well as renew social security measures to address multidimensional poverty. In addition, the project will build and effectively operate child protection systems including social work for children while developing child protection and justice services.

Also, it will pay heed to communication work to raise public awareness and change cultural practices which are billed as bars to children’s development.

Speaking at the launch workshop, Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs Nguyen Thi Ha thanked UNICEF for its contributions and support for Vietnam to ensure children’s rights in the past time.

Talking about challenges in promoting their rights, Ha stressed that the nation’s legal framework based on international standards still has many voids that need to be filled, comprising a lack of standards, regulations and processes for a comprehensive health care system, different statistics of children’s rights among ministries and branches, and limited allocation and use of human resources to carry out children’s rights.

Currently, millions of Vietnamese children are in short of or have no access to education, health care, nutrition, housing, clean water, environmental hygiene, and social integration.

Meanwhile, the social security system and social support in particular have shown limitations, which lead to the ineffective implementation of measures to protect children with special circumstances, she said, noting that public awareness of children’s rights and social involvement in handling child-related issues remain limited.

Settlement of such challenges is of utmost importance when Vietnam becomes a mid-income nation. Promoting children’s rights means helping deal with inequality and carry out the Sustainable Development Goals, making contributions to realising the country’s socio-economic development plan during 2016-2020, she said.

Director General of Child Affairs under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) Dang Hoa Nam, who is also director of the project, expressed his belief that the project will help resolve child violence and abuse.

“Protecting and Promoting the Rights of Children in Vietnam” is a collaborative project between the MOLISA and UNICEF. It was approved by the Prime Minister in 2018.