Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ha Noi, Oct. 25 (VNA) -- In Semptember 2000, President Tran Luong pledged the nation to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Each of these goals relates to the work of the UN System in Viet Nam - whether to ensure that every child goes to school or whether to develop a policy framework to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country, says Mr. Jordan Ryan, UN Coordinator on the founding anniversary of the United Nations - the UN Day (Oct. 24).

Following are what Ryan said on the occasion:

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent a consensus of world leaders to meet major global challenges of the 21st century. It is both a vision of a better future and a road map on how to get there. Apart from their title, the MDGs are not new. They have been around for most of the 1990s as outcomes of UN world summits and global conferences, and were brought together at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.

The MDGs include eradicating poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. The targets associated with each goal are to be achieved by 2015, from their levels in 1990.

The MDGs are a vision of how to solve age-old challenges. Poverty is an old enemy that has many faces. What is unprecedented is the agreement and commitment by world leaders to meet this 2015 deadline for human development.

Here in Viet Nam, the UN provides direct assistance in the areas covered by the MDGs as well as help Viet Nam to monitor progress. We attach great importance to this role, given the need for periodic stocktaking and early identification of medium-term problems and emerging challenges to achieving these long-term goals.

Viet Nam has advanced its work towards the MDGs and moreover, has developed Viet Nam's Development Goals (VDGs) - tailored to the Vietnamese context.

Viet Nam continues to make significant progress towards the MDGs. Viet Nam has been leading the developing world in cutting poverty rates, nearly halving its poverty rate from 58 percent in 1990 to approximately 32 perent in 2000 - well ahead of the global schedule of 2015.

Over the past decade, Viet Nam also has significantly improved access to primary education, clean water and sanitation, and lowerer rates of food insecurity, under-five mortality, maternal mortality and fertility. These achievements are particularly impressive given Viet Nam's current level of economic development. The result has been a considerable enhancement of human well-being. Vietnamese people now enjoy longer and healthier lives.

About Viet Nam's challenges ahead, he said: Further gains towards the MDGs will be increasingly difficult. Now that the first generation of reforms have been undertaken, the easier gains in poverty reduction have been achieved. Making difficult decisions on the direction and pace of the next wave of reforms is now the challenge. The need for a more efficient, transparent and better functioning economy, institutions and public services for all citizens will be important for long-term equitable and sustainable development.

The UN is also concerned about widening social and economic inequalities occurring within Viet Nam. The main disparities are between remote/rural areas and urban areas; ethnic minority groups and the majority Kinh; and those set to benefit from economic reforms and international integration and those who would be negative affected by these processes. We know this also concerns the Vietnamese Government.

The geographic, linguistic, ethnic and social isolation of the poorest presents a major barrier to further poverty reduction and improvements in other MDG targets. Effective targeting of more isolated and needy areas is needed. Viet Nam needs more detailed and reliable data at the local level.

We also want to draw attention to growing disparities among and within provinces with regard to MDG progress. It is important for Government policies to address this in order to prevent people from falling behind in the national development process, and to make sure that each person has an equal opportunity to improve their own lives.

There is an urgent need to focus on access to and quality of social services, especially in the poorer and more isolated areas, in order to avoid increasing disparities in accessing education and health services.--