Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister-Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem Jul 7conferred with the independent United Nations expert on minorities, Gay McDougall, who is on a ten-day visit to the Southeast Asian country beginning from July 5. At the meeting in Hanoi, the host informed McDougall of Vietnam’s policies and efforts in ensuring rights and living conditions of ethnic minority people as well as existing challenges in the work, like war consequences and others relating to geography, climate and natural disasters. Vietnam actively supports the UN declaration on rights of minorities, Khiem told the guest, reminding her of his country’s policies and assistance programs as specific examples. On her tour at the invitation of the communist government, McDougall will visit minorities-populous areas, including northwestern, central highland and Mekong delta regions, BBC said early this week. She is scheduled to report her fact-finding results to the UN Human Rights Council later. Vietnam has 53 ethnic minority groups, accounting for about 12.6% of its population which totaled up 85.79 million as of April 2009. The human rights issue is among obstacles against the Southeast Asian country to expand its ties with powerful ones in the world particularly the U.S., said observers. Tom Harkin, who is leading a delegation of American senators on their visit to Vietnam, said the country must allow free workers' unions if it wants to liberalize trade with the U.S.
"We wanted to explain to all the government officials we met with that the issue of labor rights, worker rights, freedom of organization is an essential part of any future liberalization of trade agreements with the U.S., Tom Harkin told the French News Agency AFP Jul 7.
