VietNamNet Bridge – Not being fully printed, the UNFPA slogan in Vietnamese (Girls don’t get themselves pregnant. Boys and men must become part of the solution) was misunderstood by many people.

The panel with the incomplete slogan.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Hong Thanh, UNFPA representative said that the panel with the incomplete slogan was printed to serve in the launch of the UNFPA Report on World Population 2013 in Hanoi on November 4. However, as the slogan was not fully printed, it made the community misunderstand.

According to Thanh, the full slogan is: "Girls don’t get themselves pregnant. Boys and men must become part of the solution to end adolescent pregnancy." However, in the panel, it was "Girls don’t get themselves pregnant. Boys and men must become part of the solution.”

"The message of this slogan is when young girls are pregnant, people often blame that they do not have good morals, not knowing how to protect themselves. They do not think that part of the responsibility belongs to their boyfriends. Through this, UNFPA would like to emphasize that young people need comprehensive and suitable sex education so they have sufficient knowledge and skills to protect themselves," Thanh said.

The UNFPA Representative said that about an hour after the panel was hung, the UNFPA detected the error and removed it.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hao, deputy director of the Central Center for Youth and Children, said eight panels were printed in English and Vietnamese but only one was with the error.

According to Hao, the entire messages, both in English and Vietnamese, were transferred from UNFPA to his center for printing and then sending back to the UNFPA for last review.

Hao read the incomplete slogan but he thought that it was the idea of UNFPA. “I myself still understood the message because I had known about the contents and the meaning of the program," Hao said.

Admitting its mistake in checking the panels, the UNFPA representative said that many adolescents said they still understood the message that the program wanted to convey.

VNE