Vietnam and the Millennium Development Goals (term paper)

In September of 2000, the 192 members of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration, which brought about the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are target goals to be reached by 2015. The aim of these goals is to improve the quality of life throughout the developing world through ending poverty and hunger, achieving universal education, gaining gender equality, improving child health, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, sustaining the Earth’s natural resources, and developing a global partnership for development. One of the signatories of this document is the country of Vietnam. Located in South East Asia, Vietnam has been successful at implementing many of the millennium development goals.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Vietnam was known as French Indochina, because it was colonized and run by the French. At the time, its economy was principally rice exportation. In 1912, several nationalist groups sprang up in the area, most notably the group Vietnam for Annam. The outbreak of World War I provided many Vietnamese the opportunity to go to France and experience European political ideas, like socialism, communism and capitalism. From that opportunity, came a man most commonly known as Ho Chi Minh. In 1925, he started the Association of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth, and in 1929, a nationalist known as Bao Dai organized several unsuccessful coups, during which he met and worked with Ngo Din Diem. At the outbreak of World War II, Japan occupied French Indochina. After World War II, the French retained control of the area. At that time, Ho Chi Minh declared that Vietnam was a free and independent country, and what ensued was Vietnam’s first major war. Vietnam ousted the French in 1954, and that is the time when the United States became involved in the country. Ngo Dim Diem occupied the south, while Ho Chi Minh occupied the north, supported by the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. Vietnam’s second major war started to heat up in 1965, with the farce known as the Golf of Tonkin incident, and ended in 1975 with the surrender of South Vietnam. After 1976, Vietnam went through a socialist period, but most recently, it has opened up its markets and reformed its economic policy to be friendlier with private enterprise.
The first millennium development goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. This goal has already been achieved, although this success is extremely fragile. As of 1993, the poverty rate throughout the entire country was 58.1%. As of 2004, it was 24.1%, a reduction of more than 50%. This is a good achievement and has been attributed to large economic growth since the country’s opening in 1995. From 1995 to 2003, the annual growth in GDP of Vietnam has been a steady 7.5%. That is very good economic growth for a country the size of Vietnam. This growth can be seen through increased foreign investment in the country and its resources, which has been attributed to increased employment. There are also social programs that are in place, such as the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction and Job Creation Program, a hybrid of two separate and earlier projects designed to improve the living conditions of the Vietnamese people. The government has also made an effort to reach the hard to reach and remote areas of the country. Because a lot of the country has underdeveloped infrastructure, it is difficult for these people to interact with the developed areas and get jobs. While these gains are significant, it must be stated that these gains are extremely fragile. Most of those lifted out of poverty are living just above the poverty line. This makes the people susceptible to changes in the international economic field, such as the current economic crisis. A sudden downward shift in the country’s economy and these people could very well fall back into poverty. There is also the drastic difference in the poverty levels between the rural and the urban areas. The rural areas have a much higher poverty rate than the urban areas.
The second millennium development goal is that of achieving universal primary education. This goal, while well intentioned, does not necessarily need to be applied to Vietnam with any sort of urgency. As of 2001-2002 school year, the net enrollment rate in primary education was 93.26% of girls and 99.42% of boys, and these numbers have been steadily increasing. The net enrollment rate overall for 2004 was 94.4%, and the literacy rate as of 2008 was 90.8% of the population. The reasons for this success are a commitment to education that has always been present in Vietnam. Also, Vietnam is increasing the funding for school programs to build facilities, books and training. In 2010, the total estimated amount of the state budget to be set aside for education is to be 20%. Vietnam has a ground up philosophy when it comes to education, focusing on teachers in the primary and secondary schooling areas. Also, parents are more able to send their children to school because they are on more economically stable ground. However, the education goal has some of the similar challenges that the reducing poverty goal has. There is little infrastructure in Vietnam that grants access to rural, remote areas, and it is because of that, children in those areas have a harder time getting the education that they need. Then, there is the question of quality in the school systems. It is hard to hide the fat that many of Vietnam’s teachers are under qualified and poorly trained. Also, the availability of textbooks and proper teaching facilities is a problem as well. Vietnam, to help make universal primary education a reality, is putting more funding into the training of qualified teachers and resources for the teacher to use in the classroom. Also, because the school hours are not up to snuff with western schools, Vietnam is pushing for community support for education so that they may be able to extend the school hours.
The third goal is to achieve gender equality and empower women. As a part of achieving universal primary education, putting women in school is a primary landmark for this goal. The percentage of female students enrolled in primary education has been fairly consistent from 2001 to 2004 with 48% of the total number of students being women. For higher educational levels, the highest being the university level, women are roughly on a one to one ratio with men. In other forms of education, such as specialty training and illiteracy elimination, women participate in an increasing basis. Women also make up all of the primary school teachers, but when you get to colleges and universities, the number of women teaching has dropped, at a steady pace, to approximately 40%. In white-collar management jobs, women still have a disadvantage to men. When you get to politics, women at the provincial and district level enjoy a sizeable representation, at 23.8 and 23.22 percent respectively. These numbers will be consistent through 2009. As far as I am aware, the goal for total gender equality would require that women make up 50% of the government. At this rate, I cannot see Vietnam achieving women hold 50% of all governmental positions. What I do see is a very handsome representation of women in the government. Women have also been given more economic freedom. As of 2004, women make up 48.4 percent of the working population. From 2001-2003, 30 million women received some sort of government-sponsored job training to get them into the work force. However, in the business world, men hold most of the skilled and management jobs at a disproportionately high rate, 81% to 19%. The most equal type of employment is simple work. With this ability to make more money, women have also been given two great advances in economic terms. It is a recent development that Vietnamese women are able to own land on a large scale. Before a law change, only men had their names on deeds to property. Now with the new law passed, both members of the marriage have joint ownership of property. All of these are huge steps in bringing about equality between the genders. Women’s Unions and other feminist groups have been instrumental in this progress. However, the big problem with this progress is that it is on paper, not necessarily in the minds of the male population. This is a big problem, and only time will tell whether the goal will truly be achieved.
The fourth Millennium Development Goal is to reduce the child mortality rate. This is one of the two goals that concerns healthcare. As of 1990, the under-5 child mortality rate was 58 per 1,000. However, by 2004, the rate was 31.5. The under-1 child mortality rate was 44.4, and dropped to 18 in 2004. Both of these drops in mortality are great achievements, but they aren’t quite on the target of 50% reduction yet. Because Vietnam is a jungle, it has a high instance of tropical illnesses. Measles has been one of the killers of children in Vietnam, and since an inoculation program was implemented to immunize children under 1, the number of children infected and dying from measles has dropped dramatically, from 12,058 in 2001 to 2,297 in 2003. What are some reasons for this success? Well, the government of Vietnam has invested a lot of money in public healthcare. Upgrades to pediatric care are many, and an update in medical technology has been applied. Government run anti-disease initiatives such as HIV/AIDS prevention and the equivalent to America’s Food and Drug Administration have contributed to children’s health by reducing HIV and AIDS and providing food, through specific programs, to undernourished children. Despite the progress, there is still the fact that tropical diseases are still a problem. Diphtheria is still a consistent, if not large, killer of children. And once again, urban areas receive better allocation of resources than do the rural regions, due to the difficulty in traversing the various types of terrain.
The fifth goal of improving maternal health is one of marked progress as well. While the actual maternal death rate has only dropped from 120 to 85 over a period of 14 years, Vietnam has invested time and money to solve the problem of lack of maternal heath. They have increased the number of tetanus vaccinations given to females so that 91% of females are vaccinated. Also, during pregnancy, women on average have taken two and a half trips to a doctor to be consulted during pregnancy. While this pales in comparison to most western nations, it is a step in the right direction. 90% of women giving birth in Vietnam are being attended to by trained professionals in hospitals. There is, however, a geographic and topographic difference as to where care is more readily available and taken advantage of. The southern half of Vietnam, and the urban areas, receive the best overall healthcare in Vietnam. Why is this? I don’t know, really…maybe it’s the fact that the southern half is more developed than the northern half. Anyways, one of the challenges, in the overall healthcare scheme, is the lack of availability. There simply isn’t a large enough health care infrastructure to jumpstart and sustain the progress needed to meet the goal of improved maternal health. It needs to reach out to the rural and poor areas to have a greater impact on maternal mortality, because that is where a lot of it is.
The sixth goal is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Well, I can say with a large degree of certainty that HIV and AIDS is a widespread out of control epidemic that has little to no chance of dying out anytime soon. The number of HIV infections has skyrocketed on a parabolic curve, starting from a base of 0 new cases at the end of 1990 to nearly 100,00 cases at the end of 2004. I can only guess what the number is today. Now I can see the good intention of putting up a goal that says combat HIV/AIDS, but let’s get serious for a second. There is no way that Vietnam will stop, let alone reverse the spread of HIV or AIDS by 2015. It’s not happening. With that said, let’s look at what they have done. Vietnam claims it has made a great effort to combat HIV/AIDS through 4 “priorities” and 9 “action plans”, all of which are indigenous. In addition to that, there are many international organizations that are pitching in to help. Through all this, there remains the simple fact that I have stated before in this report: there is a distinct lack of healthcare infrastructure to take care of this grave problem, and it is a grave problem. In addition to that, there is a lack of communication as to education concerning HIV/AIDS. What Vietnam is doing is attempting to build the support structure needed to combat this threat. There is the attempt to create communication lines, monitoring facilities, testing facilities, and consulting services to help families deal with the disease. In the other field of combating Malaria, Vietnam has taken drastic, specific and effective steps to eradicate the disease, mostly through the use of mosquito nets, and sprays. When combating tuberculosis, Vietnam was the first Asian country to reach it target in detection and treatment of the disease.
The seventh goal is ensuring environmental sustainability. Tree cover area increased from 27.2 percent in 1990 to 33.2 percent in 2000. This is a trend that continues to increase thanks to government reforestation policies. As for the target of 6-10% of your forests have to be protected; Vietnam already had approximately 8% of its land protected in 2004. Clean water was available to only 28% or the rural population in 1886, but by 2004, that number reached 58%, and 41% of the rural population has access to proper sanitation facilities. The total waste output for Vietnam is estimated to be nearing 22 million tons of waste a year, but by 2004, 71% of that waste is being cleaned up by sanitation, and 20 of the 100 landfills in Vietnam to not meet proper sanitation requirements. Disposing of hazardous waste is also a problem. Recycling is not government mandated, but the people recycle organic materiel to be most commonly used as fertilizer. The problems to achieving environmental sustainability include the fact that Vietnam is rapidly urbanizing and has been subject to several natural disasters. Also, there is severe air pollution in the industrial centers, and that leads to acid rain. That is no good for the environment. However, the rural areas do not have nearly the same pollution problems that the urban areas have to endure. The total CO2 output of the country was as of 1994, 103.8 million tons, with most of it coming from the agricultural sector. At the rate of increase it is going right now, it will have approximately 140 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2010. Another bad side effect of modernization is that in important river junctions near urban areas, the water is not drinkable due to pollutants.

The last millennium development goal is to develop a global partnership for development. I can say with a high degree of certainty that Vietnam has achieved this goal before I give you this information. The annual GDP growth rate of Vietnam has been 7.5 percent since until 2004, but has recently slowed in 200i to about 6.9%. Vietnam is very open to the world market and strives to make itself competitive in that market. Exports and imports grow at a healthy rate. There is also a significant amount of foreign investment in the country, but Vietnam maintains that it is not dependent on foreign aid. It received from 2001-2004 13.46 billion USD in foreign direct investment. Vietnam also has a good plan when it comes to debt, settling accounts with foreign power it accumulated, mainly during its two fights for self-determination. For Vietnam to achieve, overall, it’s goal of a global partnership for development, it says it needs more foreign direct investment to properly handle all its debts. I see no reason for this not to happen. For the last nine years, Vietnam shifted focus from reducing poverty, to providing employment opportunities to its growing population. As of 2004, all communes in Vietnam have telephones, and 10 million subscribe to Vietnam’s Viet Nam Post and Telecommunications network. The number of mobile phone users is on the rise as well.
So for Vietnam I see a reasonable completion of probably ending poverty and hunger, universal education, child health, environmental sustainability, and developing the global partnership needed to modernize and become competitive in the market. The other two goals it may achieve if it makes significant progress are the maternal health goals, and the gender equality. It has no hope of meeting the requirements of combating HIV/AIDS by 2015, maybe 2030 or 2050, but not 2015.
The advice I have for Vietnam is very simple. Everything depends on first developing some sort of feasible and reliable transport infrastructure to reach the underprivileged and underdeveloped rural areas. This is key because of Vietnam rough terrain. Once a transportation network is made, then the government will be able to properly use funds to build healthcare facilities and bring jobs to those who absolutely need it. If this transportation infrastructure is built, then everything else will be able to follow the outreach of the network. Good luck Vietnam, you’re going to need some of it.