Viet Nam SDG indicators on Children and Women Survey 2020-2021
Key indicators and findings
The General Statistics Office of Viet Nam and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Viet Nam Country Office are happy to release the findings from the Survey measuring Viet Nam Sustainable Development Goal indicators on Children and Women (SDGCW) 2020-2021. The survey was conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) in collaboration with concerned government ministries and agencies. It is part of the Global Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) Programme of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 6th Round, or MICS6, which for the first time integrated selected modules from the Demographic and Health Survey. Technical and financial oversight and support was provided by UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) contributed technical and some financial support to extend the areas addressed in the survey. The Viet Nam SDGCW survey 2020-2021 generated data for 169 indicators, of which 35 are national Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators, making it a key source of data for monitoring Viet Nam’s progress towards achieving the SDGs and its national targets.
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For children, living in poverty is a denial of their fundamental rights to good nutrition, health, water, sanitation, education, and shelter – diminishing their life chances and ability to realize their potential. This lack of investment in human capital has devastating, life-long consequences and serious implications for future generations and societies.
SDG 2 aims to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture by 2030. Since 2000, the world has reduced the proportion of children under 5 suffering from stunting by one third and the number of children who are stunted by 55 million. This remarkable achievement proves that positive change for nutrition is possible and is happening at scale – but there is more work to be done.
Good Health and Well-Being for All is a foundation for the sustainable development agenda. At the start of 2020, more children lived to see their first birthday than at any time in history. Child mortality has fallen by 50% since 2000. Maternal mortality and child marriages were on the decline and more girls were going to school and staying in school than ever before. This progress, however, has not reached every child. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, these gains have proven fragile and the future is now uncertain.
Education is an investment not only in children’s futures, but in future economic productivity, poverty reduction, social cohesion, sustainability and more. Achieving the education targets under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 will help to accelerate progress under many other SDGs.
SDG 5 aims to level the world’s playing field for women and girls by 2030 with dedicated attention to addressing all forms of gender discrimination across Goal areas. This includes eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls, ending harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), and restoring women’s and girls’ control over their own bodies through universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.
Every child, no matter where they live or their circumstance, has the right to safe water and sanitation. Without safe water, children simply cannot survive. Without safe toilets, entire communities live with human waste in their environment. Without taps and soap for handwashing, diseases spread rapidly and newborn babies risk death from infection. Young children are particularly vulnerable, and water and sanitation related diseases remain among the leading causes of death in children under five as well as contribute malnutrition and stunting.
Child labour deprives children of their childhood, and their future. Child labour is harmful to the physical, emotional, social or moral development of a child, and interferes with their schooling. Economic vulnerability associated with poverty, social inequality, armed conflict, and other risks and shocks, plays a key role in driving children to work. Child labour is both a cause and a consequence of poverty, reinforcing social inequality and discrimination.
In the rapidly changing and ever more digitalized world, digital solutions and advances in equal access to connectivity, new products, innovative approaches to tackle exponentially growing global challenges, and investments in skills that prepare youth for the future are key to the achievement of all other SDGs.
Inequality starts with the lottery of birth – who your parents are and where you are born – accounting for the vast majority of variation in the resources and opportunities available to human beings. The social and economic inequalities and disadvantages in early life increase the risk of having lower earnings, lower standards of health and lower skills in adulthood.
30 million children live outside their country of birth and among them are 12 million refugees and asylum seekers part of mixed migration flows. Tens of millions of children are also left behind by migrating parents. Further, more children than ever before are displaced within their own countries, with approximately 19 million children internally displaced by conflict and violence at the end of 2019.
Currently, around 56% of the world’s population - 4.4 billion people - live in cities. With 80 million people added to the urban population every year, the figure is set to rise close to 60% by 2030 and to almost 70% by mid-century. Over 90% of this growth will take place in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
SDG 12 pertains to children in two critical ways. First, unsustainable and unsafe consumption and production patterns lead to toxic waste and limited resources which disproportionately harms children’s health, development and environments. Second, decades of evidence show that widespread changes in positive societal behavior often begin with children becoming aware of the problems they observe in their own communities.
Climate change and environmental degradation are equity issues that undermine the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently reported, urgent action is needed to combat climate change and its impacts on current and future generations.
The issues within the Life Below Water and Life on Land SDGs (Goals 14 and 15) impact the rights and lives of many children. Agenda 2030 offers a chance to recognize and address how the development and degradation of the planet impacts the environment, economies and societies in which a child grows up.
Peace, stability, human rights and effective governance, based on the rule of law are central to the realization of child rights; and a prerequisite for sustainable development. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 includes several explicit targets for children (16.2 on violence against children; and 16.9 on legal identity for all, including birth registration); as well as many others where child rights are implicit, such as 16.3 on the rule of law and equal access to justice, 16.6 on strong institutions; and 16.7 on inclusive societies.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) area 16 includes Target 16.2 – End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture of children – which is of critical importance to both the achievement of the SDGs and UNICEF's mandate. As Governments are reporting SDG progress and plans, including for SDG 16.2, there is an opportunity to strengthen the connections between global reporting and national implementation, in particular, through the Voluntary National Review process
Partnerships are the glue for SDG implementation and will be essential to make the agenda a reality. With a mere 10 years to go to achieve the SDGs, UN Member States and the Secretary General have called for a “Decade of Action and Delivery” to accelerate progress on the SDGs from now until the year 2030.