ISO: VNM
***************************************************************************
The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
***************************************************************************
AS WRITTEN


Socialist Republic of Vietnam
STATEMENT BY H.E. MADAME TRUONG MY HOA
PRESIDENT OF THE VIETNAM NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN
HEAD OF THE DELEGATION OF THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

TO THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN
Beijing, September 8, 1995


Madame President,
Madame Secretary-General of the Conference,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Delegation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam feels gratified to
be in Beijing, beautiful Capital of the People's Republic of China with
rich traces of its age-old history and to join with tens of thousands of
women from the five continents to look back on the road travelled since
the Nairobi Conference and to chart the path for the advancement of
women into the 21st century. Our delegation highly appreciates the vast
efforts made by the host country in organising our important Conference,
and we hope that it will adopt a forceful Platform for Action with both
considerations of strategy and specific decisions to meet the pressing
imperative of life, thus forever making Beijing an important landmark
for the advancement of the world's women.

Since the early 1990s, the drastic changes in the world political
context and the globalization of the world economy as well as the
challenges of global issues facing human kind have strongly intensified
the interdependence among countries, nations and societies as well as
the indispensable cooperation among nations. In this context, the status
and interests of women who account for a half the humankind are among
the emerging global issues which pose new opportunities and challenges
within the totality of social development. A solution to such issues can
be achieved both at national and international level only in correlation
with other social issues.

Vietnamese women are of the view that women have their own specific
characteristics but at the same time they share the favourable
conditions and difficulties, as well as the common concerns and
interests of nations which are peace, independence, sovereignty and
development. Over the past twenty years, the three goals with regard to
women set forth by the Mexico Conference remain valid and are more than
ever more closely linked together by an organic relationship of mutual
interaction and supports. Along with the more comprehensive and deeper
awareness of the socio-economic development, especially of people-
centred development, governments and societies have come to acknowledge
that in order to achieve equality of women with men. conditions must be
created to enable women to be not only beneficiaries of development but
also direct agents of socio-economic development with a say in decision
and policies which have impact on social life in general and women's
life in particular. Only thus, can the goal of development centered on
the human being, with the human being as both the driving force and the
objective of development be fully materialized. At the same time the
harsh reality of a world still beset by many wars and bloody and fierce
conflicts which are taking a heavy toll on the lives of millions of
people, especially women and children who have been driven from their
homes, torn from their families and are suffering from hunger, disease
and violations of their human dignity, eloquently demonstrates the
obvious truth that peace and security constitute a prerequisite for
national and social development in general and development of women in
particular. Equality and development are indeed abstract words for the
twenty seven million people the majority of whom are women and children,
who today are refugees as a result of war and armed conflict in the
world. Let there be peace in our world. Let all women on out planet live
in peace. Without peace, women’s burden will grow heavier and
consequently, there can be no development and still less equality.

It is no coincidence that the motto of this World Conference on Women is
action for equality, development and peace. Over the past twenty years
since the Mexico Conference and International Women’s Year there has
been notable progress in the awareness of the status and rights of
women. 145 states have acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of
all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the situation of women in
the world has seen some definite improvement.

However, we still have a lone way to go. Awareness has to translate into
systematic and effective policies, measures and actions in order for our
three major objectives to become practical reality in the lives of all
women and of each individual woman on this planet. To make the 21st
century the century of women as some hope, we should act together on a
program which addresses short-term, medium-term and long-term issues for
the advancement of women and therefore of humankind on entering, the
21st century.

Madame President,

We would like to make clear the position of Vietnam on a number of
issues of common concern which have been prominent during the process
leading to the Beijing Conference.

First of all, the Vietnamese Delegation wishes to share with the
Conference a sincere and troubling reflection on an overridden,
fundamental challenge that we, women in both the North and the South.
are facing. In our view. there cannot be genuine equality if gender
equality coexists with inequity, with excessive disparity between the
rich and the poor within the same society in which the majority of those
living in poverty, unemployment and with low-income are women. Moreover
we are living in a world in which the gap between the developed! the
rich countries and the developing and poor countries between women of
the North .and women of the South not only does not narrow down but in
fact is widening as pointed out in the conclusions of the Copenhagen
Social Summit. There can be no full gender equality if we ignore the
challenge of 1.4 billion people living in poverty in the world.
including 100 million in the industrialized countries. In other words,
gender equality should go hand in hand with social justice and priority
given to poverty alleviation efforts. If no satisfactory solution to
poverty in the world at large and in each individual country is found
there will be no sustainable equality, development ;and peace for
humankind in general and women in particular.

Proceeding from such a conception, we are of the view that while
equality is a long-term and ultimate goal, a principle that we should
always try to achieve and uphold. efforts are required for the
attainment of social justice, of justice between men and women, among
women and among citizens. We also hold that in pursuit of equality.
besides codification of this principle in the various international and
national legal instruments. depending on specific conditions of time and
places ,positive action should be taken to enable women to move out of
positions of dependence , disadvantage and especially to gain access to
education, training and management. This is the important significance
of "women empowerment" or in more concrete terms, giving women
increasinq access to the different levels of the power structure.

Another major concern of our Conferenœ is the appropriate correlation
between population growth control and women's reproductive health. Our
Delegation believes that these are the two sides of the same coin one
should not overemphasize either of the two aspects nor use one aspect to
deny the other. Instead, a sensible and balanced approach should be
adopted. For those countries where the population growth rate is zero or
even negative, they are obviously in a better position to focus on
caring for women's reproductive health while countries with high
population growth rate, which generally happen to be the poor and
developing countries under the constant pressure of the acute challenge
of securing sufficient food, jobs and minimum social services for
additional millions, even dozens of millions of people every year under
conditions of economic hardship and deprivation, population control
becomes a primarv concern. We should understand and sympathize with this
heavy responsibility borne by governments of populous countries.

At the same time, policy-makers in the developing countries are
increasingly aware that a policy can be sustainable only when the people
targeted willingly embrace such policy and when the implementation of
that policy directly benefits them. In this case it means when the state
provides for women's rights and health in the whole reproductive cycle.
Conversely, too large a population and too many children in conditions
of want, of hardship will inevitably affect the quality of women's life
and deprive them of the possibility to enjoy health care services in
general and reproductive health-care in particular. For developing
countries, this represents the difficult equation between demand and
ability calling for a positive approach which combines control of
population explosion through education and provision of ever better
reproductive health-care services to women. As we did at the Asia-
Pacific Preparatory Conference in Jakarta in April 1994. Our Delegation
wishes to underline the importance of giving priority to the care and
protection of the girl child, to creating the conditions for the
development of that most vulnerable group. The girl child of today is
the woman of tomorrow. Gender awareness is shaped mostly through
education, therefore investment in this key sector is imperative and due
attention should be paid to provide access to education to all child
girls, including those in the remote and backward areas and from poor
and difficult families. Care for and investment in education of the girl
child means investing in mankind’s future, tackling the problem before
it is too late. ;

Madame President,

For the women of Vietnam, the decade following Nairobi almost coincided
with the time of Vietnam's reform and renewal (Doi Moi). After nearly 10
years of comprehensive reform, the socio-economic situation has notably
improved and remarkable headway has been made in Vietnam's integration
into the regional and world community. The improved position enjoyed
today by Vietnam domestically and externally is also facilitating the
advancement of Vietnamese women, but at the same time requires them to
adapt to the new difficulties arising in the course of the transition to
a market economy and economic development, specifically the streamlining
of manpower, the demand for higher professional and technical
qualification and for economic management skills in a competitive
environment. Another reality that Vietnamese women have to face is the
generation shift. Unlike the previous veneration of Vietnamese women
whose maturation and ascension in the political life and power structure
of the country took place under the special circumstances of wartime,
confronting them with tremendous hardships but also offering them
opportunities to show their mettle and their leadership ability; today
the Vietnamese women are striving in more favorable material conditions
but also in the content of a social psychology which has returned to old
tendencies and stereotypes which betray some prejudices against women.
Nevertheless, we are optimistic and convinced that the new generation of
Vietnamese women will know how to build on the fine and time-honoured
traditions of Vietnamese women in general and to make the most of their
rich experiences gained during the two resistance wars. Within the
limits of this statement it is not possible to give a full review of the
process and achievements in implementing the. Nairobi strategies. In
this respect you may wish to read our country report as an annex to my
statement.

We shall here focus on a few points. We would like first to mention the
overall evaluation of an independent foreign expert who conducted an
analysis through the lens of gender of the results of a nation-wide
household survey situation which made available data on health,
education, employment, agriculture, income, expenditure, fertility.
According to the report, although a poor country with a per capita GNP
of only 220 US$, Vietnam has achieved near gender equality in terms of
primary school enrollment, adult literacy, access to health care and
labour force participation (nearly 95% of all adult women work outside
the home). One interesting finding of the survey is that 27% of all
households are headed by women, the majority being divorced, separated
or widowed and these female-headed households enjoy similar economic and
living conditions as male-headed family.

The report, however, points out that two areas in which Vietnamese women
need to strive further in order to achieve fuller equality, namely
domestic labour division within the family and the persisting wage
differential between women and men due to the fact that men often work
in the high, skill sectors whereas women tend to world in labour-
intensive jobs. The survey moreover reveals that besides the gender
disparity in school enrollment, income disparity also exists which calls
for the State to not only increase access to education for girls in
general but more particularly to provide special support to poor school
girls. When analyzing the main causes for the achievements recorded by
Vietnamese women over the past 20 years since the end of the war and the
reunification of the country, the report singles out the political
commitment of the Vietnamese Government who has adopted the progressive
thinking of President Ho Chi Minh on women’s role and potential, the
widespread network of crèches and kindergartens! universal maternal
leave and specially the primary role of education. Vietnam offers an
emphatic demonstration of a conclusion which has been universally
recognized in the past recent decades, namely that education is the
golden key to women's emancipation and advancement. Our Government
itself has drawn S lessons as clearly stated in Vietnam’s country report
during the process of implementing the :Nairobi strategies:

- A correct understanding by the leadership from the central to the
grassroots level of the role of women.

- Integrating a gender perspective into socio-economic development
strategies. - Setting up and enhancing the positive role of
organizations involved in the advancement of women.
- Due attention to education and to upholding the nations and Vietnamese
women’s traditions.

- Promoting international cooperation and assistance to women-related
work.

Those are the main factors determining our past achievements which also
provide the overall guiding principles for future efforts for the cause
of Vietnamese women.

Madame President,
Madame Secretary-General,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates.

The Vietnamese Delegation comes to the Beijing Conference moved by good-
will to cooperate constructively and the determination to make a
positive contribution to the common efforts to ensure the success of the
Conference, so that a platform for action can be charted which reflects
the actual situation of women in the world and the major factors
affecting the status and rights of women, as the basis for agreement on
major principles, objectives and measures for action by the
international community, each country as well as all women in the time
to come for the sake of equality, development and peace. Moving beyond
the differences in nationality, culture. belief and experience, we,
women, are striving towards unity in diversity in the awareness that
unity and solidarity make strength. Let us hope that the 91st century
will see the victory of women's emancipation.

Thank you for your attention./.