Overview

Viet Nam and UNICEF have a long history of cooperation and trust. Following reunification in 1975, UNICEF launched a nation-wide programme to meet the basic needs of Viet Nam’s girls and boys. It was the first country in Asia and the second in the world to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and its rapid social and economic development and impressive progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals have undoubtedly had a positive impact on Viet Nam’s children and adolescents.

But rapid socio-economic change and modernisation can present new and unexpected challenges, especially for women and children. Disparities are widening by ethnicity, location and language. In 2008, it was estimated that as many as one in three children is poor when using a multi-dimensional approach to child poverty. As Viet Nam is now considered a lower middle-income country, UNICEF is working with the Government at different levels to help ensure that these vulnerable children are not left behind and to sustain past achievements in realising child rights.

Since UNICEF’s first days in Viet Nam, the country programme has shifted from emergency response and reconstruction, to meeting basic needs in health and education, to today concentrating on improving social services, while supporting sound policy and an effective legal framework to ensure each one of the country’s 30 million girls and boys can meet his or her full potential.

Measuring and supporting progress:

Across all its programmes, UNICEF Viet Nam is providing support to policy development, legal reform, and improving social services. Building the country’s capacity in child-sensitive law making, quality service delivery and improving the data quality and how it is used are important strategies for UNICEF to help children in Viet Nam.

Innovations on the ground through the Provincial Child Friendly Programme in six provinces of the country are providing a comprehensive response to the multi-sectoral needs of children. Incorporating work in education, child survival and development – which includes components supporting health and nutrition, child injury prevention, water and sanitation, HIV/AIDS prevention - child protection and social policy into a single programme has demonstrated the effectiveness of integrated services and the corresponding need to build local capacity to deliver them. This work from the field helps better inform UNICEF’s efforts to create a policy and legal framework that support the realisation of children’s rights.

The One UN Initiative

In the framework of the One UN initiative in Viet Nam, which was initiated in 2006, UNICEF maximises results for children by working in close collaboration with all UN agencies in Viet Nam. Under a common programme known as the One Plan, UNICEF ensures that the UN family takes into consideration the effect and impact of its work on children, strengthening UN and Government partnerships and cooperation in the process, and also makes sure that children’s issues are mainstreamed into the work of other UN agencies, leveraging resources for and positioning children at the centre of Viet Nam’s socio-economic development.

Notes

[1] Central Population and Housing Census Steering Committee (2010) The 2009 Viet Nam Population and Housing Census Expanded Sample Results
[2] UNICEF (2011) The State of the World’s Children 2011
[3] MOH (2010) Health Statistics Yearbook 2008
[4] NIN (2010) Annual Nutrition Surveillance System 2009
[5] GSO (2007) Vietnam Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey Report 2006
[6] NIN (2010) National Nutrition Survey 2009
[7] MOH (2010) 20 years responding to HIV/AIDS in Viet Nam
[8] MOLISA (2009) Children indicators in Viet Nam 2008 - 2009

Overview

UNICEF and Viet Nam