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.
Source: VNA