Communist Review - In 2019, the Government evaluated the main achievements that Vietnam had obtained during 5 years implementing the sustainable development goals and setting tasks for the coming period. In that common cause, Vietnam National Assembly played an important role in promoting and effectively implementing the country's sustainable development goals.

The National Assembly contributed to the participation and effective implementation of sustainable development goals

These days, sustainable development is an urgent requirement for every country in the world. The United Nations calls for its member countries to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) in order to encourage countries of various development levels to join hands in building and protecting the Earth. The implementation of the SDGs is mentioned and integrated in the socio-economic development policies of each country in order to improve health, education, and people’s physical and spiritual life and at the same time contribute to environmental protection, effective response to climate change taking place in a worrying direction in many areas of the world. Despite this, according to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the world still faces many challenges, such as rising famine; the extreme poverty rate is expected to reach 6% by 2030. Thus, the goal of eradicating extreme poverty for all in every part of the world will not be achieved. The majority of vulnerable groups continue to face many disadvantages. Unemployment rate among youngsters is 3 times higher than that of adults. Inequality is increasingly evident. Biodiversity loss is taking place at an alarming rate with about 1 million species being extinct. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asia-Pacific region continues to face a number of difficulties, such as rich and poor gap, gender inequality, climate change, water and energy security, sustainable employment. Climate change is making small island nations in the Pacific suffer damages 9 times more serious than those caused by natural disasters. ESCAP assesses that the Asia-Pacific region is hard to achieve SDGs by 2030.

Sustainable development is not only a commitment of Vietnam together with the international community, but also derives from the indispensable internal needs of Vietnam, consistent with the Party's thorough policy of "fast and sustainable development putting the people and quality of life at the center of policy planning and implementation”.  The Vietnamese government soon issued a national action plan to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and completed the implementing organ’s organizational structure. In that process, the National Assembly played an important role in finalizing the legal framework to build a socialist-oriented market economy; building a socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people, and for the people; bettering the state governance institutions; and promoting the supervisory role of the people's power agencies.

The 2019 National Conference on Sustainable Development expressed the political determination as well as the deep concern of the Party, the State and the political system on sustainable development. The conference bore great significance since it came at a critical time when the Government reviewed key achievements that Vietnam obtained over the period and set out tasks in the coming time. At the same time, the conference served as an official information channel to all people nationwide about Vietnam's achievements in the implementation of SDGs.

In such spirit, through the execution of its legislative functions, supervision and decision making on important national issues, the National Assembly discussed, adopted laws, national strategies, and budgets for programs related to sustainable development, especially in the fields of environmental protection, climate change response, hunger eradication and poverty reduction, particularly for ethnic minority areas, areas prone to typhoons, floods, climate change ... In order to achieve the goal of sustainable poverty reduction, the Government launched a socio-economic development program for 16 ethnic minorities; directed and invested in scientific and technological developments and determined to renew the growth model to ensure sustainable development.

The National Assembly also contributed to promoting the participation and implementation of the SDGs through the verification and ratification of international human rights conventions and treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the United Nations Convention on the Disabled (2007), United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishments or Treatment (1984), Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against women (1979).

Regarding foreign co-operation, the National Assembly of Vietnam chaired and coordinated with the International Parliament Union (IPU) to approve the Hanoi Declaration from 2015 on "Parliament with sustainable development goals: Turning words into action” at the 132nd General Assembly of the International Parliament (IPU-132). The declaration has made a great shift in IPU's awareness, promoting IPU and the United Nations to develop a "Self-Assessment Toolkit: Parliament and sustainable development goals" to enhance the role and participation of IPU member parliaments into the SDGs implementation process. In May 2017, the Vietnamese National Assembly together with IPU organized the first Asia-Pacific Symposium on Sustainable Development, which focused on studying and making development policies for the Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City, the localities seriously affected by climate change and sea level rise. The Symposium adopted a final document, confirming that climate change is one of the biggest threats to sustainable development, especially in the Asia-Pacific region; seriously impacts the physical and spiritual life of all people; and affects food security and water quality. National parliaments played a leading role in implementing the SDGs in the development and formation of SDGs in the country's legislative program, monitoring and deciding on important issues, ensuring budget allocations and resources needed to implement national commitments and priority SDGs; encourage international organizations and developed countries to support developing countries in achieving the set goals. The conference also made important recommendations to national parliaments and assemblies to act more vigorously and more synchronously in response to climate change through strengthening their legislative and supervisory roles; promoting international cooperation; further providing aids to the poor, the weak, women and children; and supporting areas strongly affected by climate change.

In December 2018, the National Assembly of Vietnam organized the Conference "National Assembly of Vietnam and the Sustainable Development Goals", which included talks on policies on socio-economic development and environment, gender equality issues, women and girls, placing the people at the center of each policy, removing policy barriers, promoting human rights, and leaving no one behind. The event was attended by the Secretary-General of the IPU, representatives of the United Nations development agency in Vietnam, nearly 200 National Assembly deputies and representatives of the local People's Councils across the country, together with representatives of the ministries and agencies directly implementing the tasks in the action plan for sustainable development. The National Assembly deputies also promoted the bridging role in communicating with the people, reflecting the aspirations of the people and voters to the National Assembly; regularly held dialogues with voters and other social groups, listened to their opinions on local policy effectiveness, and created conditions for them to monitor the implementation of SDGs at all levels, contributing to improving the quality and effectiveness of the National Assembly's supervisory activities.

The Vietnamese National Assembly is the first member in the IPU to translate into Vietnamese and disseminate the Toolkit's content to the National Assembly deputies and People's Council members at all levels in order to raise awareness about the roles and tasks of delegates in the field of sustainable development. The translation served as a guiding document for delegates to grasp the contents of sustainable development, their roles as well as responsibilities, from which implementation plans were built in order to best promote their rights and obligations according to regulations. The Toolkit includes the following: sustainable development goals; bringing these goals to localities; integrating into parliamentary activities; passing laws to support the implementation of SDGs; financial resources for development; monitoring the implementation and ensuring that SDGs serve the most vulnerable groups. The development of the Toolkit aims to help parliamentarians improve capacity in implementing SDGs with the key message of "No one will be left behind." Each country needs to identify appropriate strategies and common priorities to institutionalize its goals; strengthen parliamentary capacity; ensure that the implementation of these goals of the Parliament is fully consistent with the human rights framework, reflecting the basic principles of human rights regarding universality, equality and non-discrimination; identifying support requests from IPU and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

In order to apply the Toolkit and to implement all commitments and solution groups, in March 2019, the working group of the National Assembly and the United Nations in Vietnam conducted a survey on hunger eradication, poverty alleviation and sustainable development in Son La province, aiming to select pilot province for the implementation of 3 contents: 1- To promote sustainable agriculture development; to implement and expand the model of afforestation and re-greening bare land, bare hills; to reduce sustainable poverty and create long-term livelihoods for people; 2- To collect statistics on multi-dimensional poverty reduction in mountainous areas, through which implementation solutions are studied; 3- To studying and train National Assembly deputies, provincial and district People's Council deputies on the Toolkit and evaluation tools on the role of People's Council deputies in the implementation of SDGs at local level.

Focus resources to achieve sustainable development goals

In the next phase, in order to continue implementing programs and plans to effectively achieve SDGs, Vietnam is required to make efforts and focus resources on the following tasks:

Firstly, continue to better institutions on governance capacity of state agencies; continue to review the system of legal documents, criteria to assess the implementation of SDGs in Vietnam.

Secondly, identifying priorities in the process of implementing SDGs in Vietnam in the coming period, in line with resources and development platform when implementing the 17 goals and 169 specific targets. At the same time, focusing on completing the guiding criteria to integrate SDGs into socio-economic development policies of localities throughout the country.

Thirdly, it is necessary to identify the root causes, the core issues of challenges and limitations to overcome in the future. Currently, Vietnam has many advantages in implementing SDGs, such as high political determination, stable political security and social order. In addition, Vietnam is experienced in implementing the Millennium development goals, with its prestige and national position increasingly enhanced in the international arena. However, Vietnam still faces many challenges resulting from the intrinsic development requirements of the economy, limited financial and human resources. Meanwhile, Vietnam is seriously affected by climate change. This situation poses great challenges that require our efforts to overcome and resolve.

Fourthly, the National Assembly of Vietnam will reinforce the activities of National Assembly deputies as well as People's Councils of provinces and cities to raise awareness of sustainable development, develop a sustainable development evaluation framework, conduct periodic monitoring of the implementation of the National Action Plan to implement the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, organize field surveys and encourage local development policies. The economy goes hand in hand with environmental and social sustainability.

Fifthly, regarding the coordination mechanism, the strengthening of information connection and the coordination of actions between the Government and the National Assembly should be interpreted more closely and more frequently. In 2020, it is necessary that the Government reports to the National Assembly the preliminary review of 5 years of implementation of the SDGs. This is the basis for the National Assembly to consider approving the Resolution of socio-economic development in the next period. In addition, the National Council for Sustainable Development and Competitiveness Improvement continues to promote an interdisciplinary mechanism, which requires the involvement of all National Assembly's agencies, among which the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee play a coordinating role.

Sixthly, promoting the mechanism of cooperation and partnership with domestic and international organizations and partner countries to supplement resources and experience in the SDG implementation process.

With its role and function, the Government strives and is determined in operating and deciding on fast and sustainable development targets and programs. The National Assembly will continue to accompany the Government and urge National Assembly agencies to participate more effectively in the implementation of the SDGs to achieve desirable outcomes and successfully fulfill Vietnam's commitments with the United Nations and IPU for the nation's development and well-being of its people. The National Assembly highly appreciates diplomatic missions, representative organizations of IPU and the United Nations in Vietnam for their continued support and cooperation in carry out its tasks in promoting the participation and implementation of SDGs in Vietnam./.

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Source: Communist Review No. 928 (October-2019)