🇻🇳🇻🇳 Vietnam will be the first country in the world to develop & promulgate the Population Law
It creates a unified & synchronous legal basis to contribute to institutionalizing the Party's guidelines, policies & guidelines on population & overcoming limitations & shortcomings, meeting the requirements of population development in the new situation. Inheriting the provisions of the Population Ordinance, ensuring the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations in population work; referring to international legal experiences and some countries in the world to ensure compliance with international treaties to which Vietnam is a member.
The Draft Population Law has been developed and completed in the direction of inheriting, adjusting 10 articles, amending 01 article & abolishing 26 articles of the 2003 Population Ordinance to be suitable, meet practical requirements & overcome difficulties & obstacles in population work.
The Ministry of Health has also studied & supplemented 15 articles including regulations on: communication, mobilization, education on population; adjusting population size, structure & distribution; improve population quality; conditions to ensure population work implementation
The draft Population Law has many innovative contents compared to the Population Ordinance, focusing on standardizing 4 major policies: Maintaining replacement fertility, minimizing gender imbalance at birth, adapting to population aging, aging population & improving population quality. The scope of this adjustment is consistent with the 04 policies approved by the Govt & does not stipulate the contents that have been adjusted in other laws.
New additional contents compared to the provisions of the Population Ordinance on maintaining replacement fertility: increasing maternity leave, financial support when giving birth, adding priority criteria for buying or renting social housing according to the provisions of the law on housing.
The Law proposes to increase maternity leave when giving birth to a second child; financial support for a number of target groups (ethnic minority women; women in localities with low fertility rates; women who give birth to two children before the age of 35); Priority to buy or rent social housing according to the provisions of the law on housing.
The Draft Population Law also clearly states that men with 2 children whose wives have died are in the priority group to buy social housing.
To reduce the gender imbalance at birth & bring the gender ratio at birth back to a natural balance, the draft Population Law has a number of regulations: Prohibiting the selection of the gender of the fetus in any form except for the case of determining the gender for the diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases related to gender; encouraging the inclusion of the content of not favoring males over females and not choosing gender at birth in the village covenants and conventions of the residential community.
For medical staff, medical practitioners who announce, notify, or disclose information about the gender of the fetus to customers will be suspended, except for cases of determining gender for the purpose of diagnosing & treating genetic diseases related to gender as prescribed by the Ministry of Health.
To adapt to population aging & aging population, the Law has many contents to support elderly care, develop human resources for elderly care; provide, process information, notify & denounce acts of infringement, or prevent the elderly from exercising their legal rights.
The draft Law mentions the need for suitable day care and boarding facilities for the elderly. Care centers are entitled to investment incentives to carry out this work.
With the content of improving population quality, the draft Law proposes to conduct pre-marital health consultation and examination; prenatal and neonatal screening, diagnosis, and treatment.
Vietnam’s TFR actually went below 2.1 replacement level in 1999, reached the current 1.9 in 2005, then it went back to 2.1 in 2014 and have hovered around 1.9 since 2018
data.worldbank.org/indicator…