It was an historic occasion when the first Master Programme on Human Rights in Vietnam was launched in Hanoi on September 7, celebrating the Vietnamese – Norwegian academic partnership on human rights education.
On September 7 the first Master Programme on Human Rights Laws was launched at the School of Law of Vietnam National University in Hanoi. The programme has been developed by the School of Law in cooperation with the Vietnam Programme at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo, and is the first comprehensive postgraduate program in Vietnam with a focus on human rights.
A strengthening of education of human rights is one of the recommendations from the Universal Periodic Review in the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2009, and Norway and Vietnam are currently cooperating on several projects related to education and research on human rights under the umbrella of the annual bilateral Human Rights Dialogue.
In his opening speech at the launching ceremony, Ambassador Ståle Risa emphasized that Vietnamese-Norwegian academic partnerships are an important part of the wide-ranging relationship between the two countries, and he was particularly grateful for the close cooperation with Vietnam National University in the area of human rights but also in the area of climate change and natural disaster mitigation. He underlined that providing education on human rights is key to a thorough understanding and thereby protection of human rights, and that knowledge about the international human rights standards is of utmost importance in our common fight for human rights.
