Adoption law puts local families first

Adoption law puts local families first

QĐND – Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 19:53 (GMT+7)

Encouraging Vietnamese couples to adopt local children was a main topic in the Draft Law on Adoption under discussion at Nov. 2 National Assembly meeting in Hanoi.

Ensuring the rights of adopted children, especially those from underprivileged backgrounds, was also discussed during the meeting.

The law is designed to build up a legal framework by common consent to raise public and private responsibility for protecting and raising children and defending their rights.

The law is expected to meet an increasing demand for Vietnamese couples who want to adopt children, as well as protecting the rights of new parents by putting their minds at ease so they can do their jobs well.

Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong said on Nov. 2 that some amendments had been introduced into the new bill to encourage and favour Vietnamese couples who wanted to become adopters.

Adoption by foreigners living overseas will be the last option to be considered.

Commune-level People’s Committees will be given responsibility for obtaining the opinions of children facing adoption.

Another amendment sets out to minimise corrupt practices involving consultant councils in introducing children to foreign adopters, said the minister.

Another regulation of the draft bill is the legal consequences of the adoption. Many other adoption-related issues, such as how to terminate an adoption, minimum conditions for children in their new homes and the duties of adopted children and their adopting families were also examined.

A second draft bill discussed on Nov. 2 was on postal services, which is expected to be approved during the present assembly meeting.

Most deputies said a draft law was necessary to help standardise and modernise postal services.

Minister of Information and Communications Le Doan Hop explained the Government’s role in providing a public-interest postal service and the enlargement of private services.

Deputies requested an amendment that the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Corp should not be the sole provider of public postal services and said the Government should choose companies to share the service.

Many deputies said the postal sector is providing many services in the public interest from which it does not profit. They said it was time to separate the services and allow private enterprise to get more involved.

Meanwhile, amendments on laws controlling banking and credit funds were also discussed on Nov. 2.

Changes in banking regulations were said to clearly regulate the responsibilities and duties of the National Assembly, Government and the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) in carrying out national monetary policy – and checking the competence of bodies implementing the policy.

The NA’s Economic Committee, which reviewed the 12-year-old law, said that in spite of amendments in making monetary policy, and the role of the supervisory bodies in ensuring safe credit funds, the revised bill needed to be continually amended and improved.

Suggested revisions include clarifying the independence of the SBV in implementing monetary policy and regulating the competence of the NA to make the decisions.

Source: VNA

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Sweden offers help over int’l child adoption

Hanoi (VNA)– Swedish Secretary of Health and Social Affairs Karin Johansson emphasised her Government’s interest in the child adoption issue in Vietnam and offered help to the Southeast Asian country in ratifying the relevant Hague Convention in the near future.

Johansson made this statement during her working session with the Deputy Minister of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), Nguyen Thanh Hoa, in Hanoi on November 11.

She also expressed expectations of stronger bilateral cooperation in family care as well as in protecting the health and rights of children.

Vietnam and Sweden have enjoyed long-standing relations in these sectors, marked by the signing of an agreement regarding international child adoption.

Hoa reaffirmed the priority given by the Vietnamese Government to the protection and care of people with disabilities, as well as children as stated in numerous legal documents, including the Law on Protection, Care and Education of Children promulgated in 2004.

Vietnam was the second country in the world and the first in Asia to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 and issued two relevant supplementary decrees in 2001. Efforts are currently being made to prepare reports on the progress that has been made in implementing the Convention while a law regarding the disabled is in the pipeline as part of an effort to submit it to the National Assembly for consideration and approval in 2010.

The country is home to some 1.4 million disadvantaged children, mostly living in remote communities, vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters and with high rates of poverty.

“Vietnam hopes to receive more technical and financial assistance from Sweden as well as to learn more from Swedish experiences of a safe community, the importance of social work in preventing child injuries, the protection and care of disadvantaged children, child carriers of HIV/AIDS, disabled and malnourished children and those that have dropped out of school” the Deputy Minister of MOLISA said.-