Vietnam pursues consistent policy of protecting, promoting human rights amid challenges

Vietnam’s consistent policy of protecting and promoting human rights has been clearly shown in the context of COVID-19 posing unprecedented challenges to global efforts in protecting human rights. 

Recently, the Government has issued Resolution No. 128/NQ-CP on “Safely, flexibly adapting to and effectively controlling COVID-19”. After nearly two months of implementing the document, Vietnam has managed to put the pandemic under control across the country. Meanwhile, the economy has gradually recovered, and people’s life has returned to normal. The 26 trillion VND (1.13 billion USD) supporting package has helped employees and employers overcome difficulties and considerably contributed to ensuring social welfare for people. 

Vietnam’ efforts to ensure human rights during the pandemic have also been demonstrated in the country’s drastic, synchronous and methodical implementation of the vaccine strategy, in which vaccine diplomacy plays the key role, heading to the goal of providing free-of-charge COVID-19 vaccination to all people. 

A survey conducted by Latana research firm on people’s satisfaction with their government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which covered 52 countries and territories around the world, showed that 96 percent of Vietnamese people are satisfied with the Government’s COVID-19 prevention and control activities. 

Vietnam is also working hard to effectively realise the UN SDGs so as to promote human rights. UNDP Resident Representative a.i. in Vietnam Terence D. Jones affirmed that Vietnam is in the top group among the three groups of countries with fastest progress in implementing the SDGs and one of the countries with highest speed of reaching the goals in Asia. 

Particularly, this year, Vietnam has for the first time built a voluntary mid-term report on the implementation of UPR third cycle recommendations to submit to the UNHRC. 

Diana Torres, Assistant Resident Representative & Head of Governance and Participation Unit at UNDP Vietnam commented that through the report, Vietnam continues to make  excellent progress in ensuring socio-economic rights of its people, especially in social protection, health insurance, poverty reduction and gender quality. 

She held that the compiling of the report is a positive effort reflecting Vietnam’s commitments on human rights issues at international level. 

The promotion of human rights is the highest priority and the final target as well as the motivation of sustainable development in Vietnam. Efforts by the Party and State of Vietnam to ensure that all people enjoy their fundamental rights, especially amid the adverse impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, have manifested the country’s persistent and thorough policy on protecting and promoting human rights./.