Vice State President Vo Thi Anh Xuan met Catherine Mary Russell, UNICEF Executive Director in New York on March 12.

At the meeting, Madam Xuan hailed UNICEF's co-operation and support for the nation over the past 50 years in developing and implementing guidelines and policies on childcare, education, and protection.

The Vice President asked UNICEF to increase technical support and mobilize resources to help Vietnam fine-tune its legal system and effectively carry out the National Action Program for Children for the 2021 to 2030 period, the 2022-2026 UNICEF Viet Nam Country Program, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as projects on clean water and sanitation, medicine, health care, education, especially science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and  combating violence against children.

She suggested UNICEF help Vietnam build a set of indicators to evaluate child protection and care that are close to international standards, whilst also paying attention to supporting 6.7% of children under 16 years old who are living in difficult circumstances and need frequent subsidies, especially those in remote and ethnic minority areas.

Russell highly appreciated Vietnam for actively implementing a broad array of collaboration activities in recent times with positive results for Vietnamese children, including those with specially difficult circumstances, as well as its strong international commitments on child rights.

She affirmed that UNICEF will fully co-operate with Vietnam in implementing the 2022-2026 UNICEF Viet Nam Country Program, and better ensuring child rights, especially in education, health, nutrition, access to clean water, and sanitation.