English - CEDAW Southeast Asia

A Gendered and Rights-Based Review of Vietnamese Legal Documents through the Lens of CEDAW
planning services; (d) health check before marriage registration; 747 (e) population qualityraising
services; and (e) other population services. 748
This is reiterated in Article 15 of the Decree on Population, which lists reproductive
health care and family planning measures: (a) to propagate to and educate people, especially
minors, on reproductive healthcare and family planning; (b) to provide directly to people
services on reproductive health care and family planning in a diversified, qualitative,
convenient and safe manner; (c) to encourage material and spiritual incentives; (d) to adopt
social policies to step up the implementation of reproductive health care and family planning
among people; (e) to increase capability of organizing and implementing programs, projects
and plans on reproductive health care and family planning; and (f) to detect and handle
violations in reproductive health care and family planning.
Favourable conditions for the poor and ethnic minorities
The Population Ordinance provides that the State will support and create favorable conditions
for the implementation of family planning programs and projects for the poor, persons meeting
with difficulties, and minors, giving priority to areas with exceptionally difficult socio-economic
conditions or with difficult socio-economic conditions. 749 The Decree on Population explicitly
extends this to ethnic minorities in those areas. 750
Contraception
Also among the forms of services on reproductive health care and family planning are “to
distribute on the basis of communities, supply free of charge, to socially market, to sell freely
at requests, contraceptive means of different kinds” and “to employ the mobile technical
teams, State-run medical establishments and private medical establishments to provide
medically technical services under the provisions of law”. 751 The Decree on Population states
that persons providing family planning services must have professional knowledge and skills
suitable to each contraceptive measure. 752 Contraceptive users must use contraceptives
voluntarily and must be knowledgeable of contraceptive measures. 753
Education
The Population Ordinance and Decree on Population prioritize the provision of information,
education and communication on population. Article 7 of the Population Ordinance provides
that information on population must cover: (a) knowledge about population, reproductive
health, family planning, gender equality, hereditary diseases, measures to raise the population
quality; (b) contents and measures of regulating the population size, structure, raising the
747
Article 23 of the Population Ordinance provides: “State shall encourage and create conditions for men and women to have
health checks before making marriage registration; have gene tests for people in danger of genetic defects or being
affected with toxic chemicals; give counseling on hereditary genes; provide material and spiritual assistance for people
with genetic defects, affected with toxic chemicals or infected with HIV/AIDS…” The Decree on Population provides further
elaboration on pre-marriage registration health checks in Article 2, and health check and hereditary diseases in
Article 26.
748
Population Ordinance, Article 8
313
749
Ibid., Article 9(3);
750
Decree on Population, Article 15
751
Ibid., Article 20
752
Decree on Population, Article 21(2)
753
Ibid., Article 21(1)
Marriage and family (Article 16 of CEDAW)