Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh (first from right) attends the event (Photo: VNA)
Geneva (VNA) – Vietnam will spare no effort to ensure better fundamental human rights for people, Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh said at the 32nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 13.
She reiterated Vietnam’s consistent policy of respecting and ensuring human rights as well as obtaining international support and assistance in the field.
The Vice President highlighted the crucial role of the UNHRC in addressing human rights issues at the global scale.
The biggest success of the council over the past decade was to promote dialogues and cooperation between countries, especially through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), she said.
She noted that Vietnam twice made the UPR reports and the country realised the active contributions of this mechanism, especially in raising public awareness of human rights and promoting inter-sector coordination and people’s engagement in the drive.
Vietnam is preparing a master plan to implement UPR recommendations that the country has already approved, she said.
She pointed to numerous challenges that directly affect the enjoyment of human rights such as poverty, natural disasters, diseases, terrorism, extremism and cross-border crimes.
She called on the international community to increase dialogues and cooperation to address the issues, saying this is how Vietnam has approached human rights issues over the past two years of joining the UNHRC and other UN forums.
Vietnam hopes the UNHRC will support the country in carrying out the 2030 Agenda on sustainable development, specifically climate change adaptation.
She explained that people in the central region, Central Highlands and Mekong Delta of Vietnam are bearing the brunt of severe drought and saltwater intrusion.
Given that fact, Vietnam and other members from the UN Working Group plan to introduce a resolution on climate change and human rights which focuses on children, at the session, she added.
She noted that Vietnam has gained significant achievements during 15 years of implementing the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), citing the poverty rate was brought down to below 4.5 percent in 2015 from 58 percent in 1993.
In the next 15 years, the country will concentrate to mitigating the negative impacts of natural disasters, coping with climate change and narrowing the development gaps between rural and urban areas.
More importantly is ensuring all people could enjoy the national socio-economic achievements, especially women, the elderly, children, ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities, she stressed.
To do so, Vietnam is building a plan to realise the MDGs and integrating those targets into the country’s development policies and programmes, she said.
As a member of the UNHRC, Vietnam will actively make more contributions and cooperate with other nations to promote the implementation of the MDGs, she added.
Established in 2006, the UNHRC groups 47 countries.-VNA
