The event was organized by the UNESCO Office in Viet Nam, in collaboration with the Department of Teachers and Educational Administrators of the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and CJ Group.

Phase I of the project "We are ABLE", implemented from 2019-2022, targeted 12 districts in three provinces: Ha Giang, Ninh Thuan, and Soc Trang. The project increased ethnic minority girls' access and retention in schools and ensured better employment opportunities for ethnic minority women.

Phase I of the project reached 16,296 students (including 8,021 girls). Across the 24 project schools, among ethnic minority learners, enrolment rates increased from 62 percent to 67 percent, drop-out rates dropped from 3.8 percent to 2.9 percent, and transition rates to upper-secondary rose from 69.7 percent to 76.7 percent.

The event was organized by the UNESCO Office in Viet Nam. Photo: VN

Meanwhile, 2,136 teachers and educational administrators were trained on gender-responsive school counselling, and thousands more will be reached through the national roll-out of the online course.

Furthermore,120 ethnic minority women and youth were empowered with entrepreneurship training and continue to be supported through the Commune's Women's Union.

Phase II of the "We are ABLE" project will be rolled out in Cao Bang, Kon Tum and Ninh Thuan provinces, aiming to empower ethnic minority youth, especially girls and young women, in boarding secondary schools and neighboring communities to overcome stereotypes and to voice and act on their dreams, hopes and aspirations in education.

Phase II will build skills and platforms and create an enabling environment for student-led communication and advocacy and strengthen Government commitment to education for ethnic minority children and youth, especially girls.

Addressing the event, Ms. Justine Sass, Chief of the Section of Education for Inclusion and Gender Equality of UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, said that education can be a true source of empowerment when it addresses the gender-based barriers, stigma and discrimination that hold learners back from fulfilling their right to education and future life, work and leadership opportunities.

"We must harness education's power to unlock the potential of learners in all of their diversity and transform educational institutions to achieve just, equal and inclusive societies", she shared.

The project is expected to contribute to the Vietnamese Government's new 10-year Education Development Strategic Plan, the Strategy for Ethnic Minority Development, and the national commitment to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 4 on Education and Goal 5 on gender equality, said UNESCO Representative to Viet Nam Christian Manhart at the event.

***The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognized that, in addition to gender-based discrimination, “many women face additional barriers to the enjoyment of their human rights because of such factors as their race, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, disability or socioeconomic class or because they are indigenous people, migrants, including women migrant workers, displaced women or refugees”. Viet Nam is signatory to many international treaties and conventions related to human rights, the rights of women in general, and ethnic minority women in particular, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), and the agreed conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women.

The Government of Viet Nam has rigorously observed its international commitments and its achievements are held in high regard by the international community, particularly its achievements in relation to gender equality. Viet Nam is an ethnically diverse country with 54 recognized ethnic groups, of which 53 are minorities. The majority of the population (85.5 per cent) belongs to the Kinh ethnic group, and the 53 other ethnic groups in Viet Nam account for the remainder of the population and total about 13.4 million people. Many of the ethnic minority groups are concentrated in geographically remote and mountainous regions of the country.

Inequalities between the Kinh ethnic group and ethnic minority groups remain wide and persistent, especially in education and training, employment and income, and health care and reproduction. The gender gap among and within ethnic minority groups also persists. Viet Nam has developed a relatively progressive legal framework at the national level on gender equality and the empowerment of women, which includes policies to promote gender equality in ethnic minority areas. Specific provisions aimed at promoting gender equality in ethnic minority areas are included in the Law on Gender Equality (2006), the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2011–2020 and the National Programmes on Gender Equality for 2011–2015 and 2016–2020.

Additionally, there are a number of policies targeted specifically towards ethnic minority areas such as the “National Project  on Ending Child and Inter-Family Marriage in Ethnic Minority Regions for 2015–2025 period” and the “National Project on Supporting Gender Equality Activities in Ethnic Minority Areas for the 2018–2025 period”. Those policies were designed to create positive changes in terms of gender equality, to advance the status of ethnic minority women and ultimately to contribute to the achievement of the National Strategy for Gender Equality 2011–2020. In recent years, Viet Nam has increased its efforts to conduct surveys and studies to provide data and practical evidence for policymaking and to inform the policies of statutory bodies responsible for gender equality in ethnic minority areas.

The Survey on the Socio-Economic Situation of the 53 Ethnic Minority Groups in Viet Nam (conducted for the first time in 2015 by the General Statistics Office) found that gender issues in minority regions in Viet Nam are more severe in ethnic minority groups than in the majority Kinh ethnic group and they must be addressed and overcome. In ethnic minority communities, women and girls are more disadvantaged in terms of access to opportunities and resources due to social norms which tend to position women as inferior to men and restrict their livelihood options and often limit them to domestic and reproductive activities.

The intersection of discriminations based on both gender and ethnicity has the most significant impact, compounding inequalities faced by ethnic minority women and girls. In the context of Viet Nam’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the pledge to “leave no one behind”, the gender inequality issues in ethnic minority areas require further special attention.