Sweden Offers Help In Adoption Dispute

Swedish
Secretary of Health and Social Affairs Karin Johansson emphasised her
Government’s interest in the child adoption issue in Vietnam and offered help to the Southeast
Asian country in ratifying the relevant Hague Convention in the near future.

    Johansson
made this statement during her working session with the Deputy Minister of
Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), Nguyen Thanh Hoa, in Hanoi on November 11.

    She also
expressed expectations of stronger bilateral cooperation in family care as well
as in protecting the health and rights of children.

    Vietnam and Sweden have enjoyed long-standing
relations in these sectors, marked by the signing of an agreement regarding
international child adoption.

    Hoa
reaffirmed the priority given by the Vietnamese Government to the protection
and care of people with disabilities, as well as children as stated in numerous
legal documents, including the Law on Protection, Care and Education of
Children promulgated in 2004.

    Vietnam was the second country in the world
and the first in Asia to sign the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and issued two relevant
supplementary decrees in 2001. Efforts are currently being made to prepare
reports on the progress that has been made in implementing the Convention while
a law regarding the disabled is in the pipeline as part of an effort to submit
it to the National Assembly for consideration and approval in 2010.

    The country
is home to some 1.4 million disadvantaged children, mostly living in remote
communities, vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters and with high rates
of poverty.

    “Vietnam
hopes to receive more technical and financial assistance from Sweden as well as
to learn more from Swedish experiences of a safe community, the importance of
social work in preventing child injuries, the protection and care of
disadvantaged children, child carriers of HIV/AIDS, disabled and malnourished
children and those that have dropped out of school” the Deputy Minister of
MOLISA said.

 

 


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