Child Rights Situation Analysis: Vietnam Country Office 2014

Vietnam has made impressive socio-economic development progress between late 1990s and 2000s. From a planned centralized economy based on public ownership, to a multi-sector economy based on the market, Vietnam was transformed with an average annual growth rate of 7.4 percent from 1990 to 2008. This achievement helped the country move from the list of poor countries to join the ranks of middle income countries in 2009. However, while these national-level trends are encouraging, they mask acute social, ethnic, and regional inequalities, especially for the most vulnerable sub-groups and the poorest of the poor.

This Child Rights Situation Analysis examines the rights of children in Vietnam across several spectrums: education, health, protection, and child rights governance. Strategic programmes and policies to promote children rights to access to health care and education have made considerable progress. National programmes on child protection from 2010 -2020 have been put in place to protect the rights of the child. There remain challenges that constrain the exercise of the Rights of the Child including the lack of effective mechanisms for law enforcement, inadequate public awareness, knowledge levels of child rights as well as practical implementation on the ground. There is a need to establish a multi-sectorial and organizational coordination and to effectively functionalize the responsibility of duty barriers in the practice of the Rights of the Child.