• Excellency Mr Nguyen Khanh Ngoc, Vice Minister of Justice;
• Representatives from the Supreme People's Court (TBC), Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Statistics Office and other Government Ministries and agencies;
• Representatives of the Provincial Justice Offices;
• Colleagues from Vital Strategies, Development Partners, and UN agencies,
• and the media representatives;

Distinguished guests,

It’s my honour to be here today together with Vice Minister Nguyen Khanh Ngoc to co-chair the conference to review 6 years of implementation of Vietnam’s Civil Status Law and to discuss solutions to better protect the legitimate rights and benefits of the population.

To start, please allow me to congratulate the Ministry of Justice for acting as the lead Government Ministry to ensure the enforcement of this Law. Since 2016 when the Law took effective, encouraging results have been recorded. These include the finalization of legal documents detailing the implementation of the Law; modernization of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS); and the promotion of online civil registration. The Ministry has taken a lot of efforts and actions to strengthen cross-sector coordination, and to increase the registration rates for vital events of people’s life.

Vietnamese citizens can now perform their civil status registration at their convenience. They may submit dossiers of civil status directly to the civil status registration agency or send them by post, or they may register through the online civil status registration system. Currently, all provinces and cities have online birth registration, while 62 out of 63 provinces and cities have online death registration. 62 out of 63 provinces and cities have the online marriage registration system. Almost all the provinces and cities across the country have the Provincial Administrative Procedure Information System connected with the Ministry of Justice's electronic civil status registration and management system, thus contributing to synchronizing and unifying data as well as reducing the workload and time for civil servants.

However, the low rate of death registration and other vital events need to be improved. It is essential to promote stronger collaboration between relevant Ministries and sectors as well as agencies at all levels. More financial resources for the implementation of the Law at the local levels need to be allocated. 

Dear participants,

The enforcement of the Civil Status Law and the implementation of the 2017-2024 National Action Programme on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) play an important role in modernising CRVS, which will help Viet Nam honour its commitments to “building a more resilience future with Inclusive CRVS in Asia and the Pacific” as declared in the Second Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific, held in Bangkok last year.

A well-functioning CRVS system in Vietnam will help ensure people’s rights and benefits including health and education. A streamlined registration mechanism across the life course is crucial as it ensures that births, marriages, deaths, and other vital events of life are registered and documented by the legal authorities. Individuals with civil registry documents can access public services such as education, health care, employment, social protection, and other public services. Civil status registration is also particularly important for women, creating a framework for addressing gender inequalities.

In addition, accurate and complete vital statistics – derived from civil registration records – are critical to develop national and local policies and to measure development outcomes, ensuring no one is left behind. For example, timely statistics disaggregated by causes of death and other demographic characteristics are crucial to design, implement and monitor public health policies as well as to detect emerging health crises, such as COVID-19.

Vital statistics are also invaluable for planning, monitoring, and evaluating various programmes on primary health care, social security, family planning, maternal and child health, nutrition, education, and public housing. 

Distinguished guests,

We have only eight years left to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and the CRVS system is central in this regard. We need to remind ourselves that 15 out of 17 SDGs use indicators, which require high quality CRVS data. As such, CRVS can be an accelerator for the achievement of SDGs.

Therefore, UNFPA is very honoured to support the Government of Viet Nam to speed up the process of change, towards a modern and progressive CRVS system, in which data including vital statistics will be shared and used for the formulation and implementation of evidence-based policies and decision-making. And we are fully committed to continueing our interventions for CRVS.

Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to Vital Strategies for partnering with UNFPA through the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative. We are jointly supporting the Government of Vietnam to achieve a modern and progressive CRVS to “get everyone in Viet Nam in the picture”, which is essential for the achievement of the U.N Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Thank you. I wish you a fruitful workshop!