Vietnam’s acceptance of 241 out of 291 recommendations made by member countries, reaching nearly 83%

With a consistent policy of protecting and promoting human rights, Vietnam attaches special importance to the UPR mechanism and fully and seriously fulfills the obligations and commitments under the UPR, including the implementation recommendations approved by the UPR.

Actively participating in the UPR Mechanism since 2008 and implementing the recommendations of other countries, especially in the period of 2014-2019, is vivid proof that Vietnam has fulfilled its responsibilities as a member country of the United Nations (UN).

The UPR mechanism has been in place since 2008 and is one of the outstanding achievements of the United Nations Human Rights Council thanks to its principles of transparency, fairness, non-discrimination, and promotion of dialogue and cooperation among member countries.

In the presence of many countries, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Vietnamese organizations that have consultative regulations with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Deputy Minister Le Hoai Trung, Head of the Vietnamese delegation reaffirmed Vietnam's consistent policy on the protection and promotion of human rights, stemming from the historical tradition of Vietnam in the struggle to build and defend the country, and the consistent goal of the Party and State of Vietnam: always place people at the center of all policies and actions.

Updating information to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation of protection and promotion of human rights in Vietnam in the past six months, Deputy Minister Le Hoai Trung emphasized that Vietnam's top priority is to build a rule-of-law state and legal reforms, as shown in many activities that attracted the attention of Vietnamese voters and international public opinion at the 7th Session of the 14th National Assembly; as well as the issuance of a number of important Decrees and Circulars related to human rights in 2019.

The Vietnamese delegation leader highlighted many comprehensive achievements in socio-economic development, especially in terms of economic growth, poverty reduction, allocating resources for social security, and increasing people’s access to information technology, ensuring and promoting religious life, beliefs, ensuring the rights of workers ...

Vietnam shared with other countries the experiences it gained from the process of promoting and ensuring human rights.

Trung noted the UN Human Rights Council of Vietnam’s acceptance of 241 out of 291 recommendations made by member countries, reaching nearly 83%, including important and comprehensive contents of the work of ensuring human rights, especially the improvement of the legal system, measures to ensure civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights, and strengthening institutions to protect human rights and new issues related to migration, climate change, environment and sustainable development.

In the previous cycle, Vietnam approved 80.2% of the recommendations, and issued the Master Plan to implement and complete 96.2% of them. Vietnam was listed in the group of countries that have effectively implemented the UPR, which was highly appreciated by the international community.

Representatives from other countries and international organizations, non-governmental organizations welcomed the efforts to ensure human rights in Vietnam; noting Vietnam’s serious participation in all three cycles of the UPR cycles, which shows that Vietnam has fulfilled its responsibilities as a member of the UN, because this mechanism is universal, for all member states of the UN.

The development of national reports, dialogues with other countries, review, approval and implementation of recommendations demonstrated Vietnam's responsibility to implement international human rights commitments, contributing to deploy active foreign policy and international integration of the Party and State.

Representatives from other countries also recognized Vietnam's achievements in judicial reform, perfecting the laws on human rights, constantly striving to improve people's lives, ensuring social security and the rights of vulnerable groups, responding to the impacts of climate change, improving access to public services, ensuring freedom of religious beliefs, access to information ...

Vietnam can share with other countries the experiences gained from Vietnam in the process of promoting and ensuring human rights. Photo: Anh Dung

According to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung, through this process, Vietnam also shared with other countries the experiences it gained from the process of promoting and ensuring human rights. At the same time, in the process of implementation, Vietnam also learned from the experience of other countries to be able to do this task better.

Mr. Trung also said that a very important thing is that through this process, Vietnam also gains a lot of experience to put into specific plans, strategies and measures in order to improve the implementation of human rights in Vietnam.

In addition, in the process of implementing the commitments the country has made, Vietnam also has more conditions to dialogue with countries, share and provide more about the reality in Vietnam, and at the same time make timely comments on ideas that are different from Vietnam’s views on promoting and ensuring human rights.

Minh Van