Population Law: Shift from 'population and family planning policy' to 'population and development'

On behalf of the drafting agency, Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan respectfully thanked the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, the agencies of the National Assembly, especially the National Assembly deputies who spent a lot of time researching, discussing and contributing their enthusiastic, profound and constructive opinions to the draft Law on Population and the draft Law on Disease Prevention.

At the end of the discussion session, the Minister of Health spoke to explain and clarify the opinions raised by the National Assembly deputies. Photo: Nhu Y

Regarding the Population Law project, according to the Minister, this is a law with a very wide scope, directly related to people and human rights, especially the way to express policies to care for Vietnamese people in all fields.

"Therefore, when drafting the Population Law, the Ministry of Health reviewed all relevant regulations. There are about 60 laws and codes related to people and human rights that have been carefully considered and reviewed. For example, population size has been identified as one of the criteria in the Law on Urban and Rural Planning; population structure is shown in the Law on Children, the Law on the Elderly, the Law on Youth...", Minister Dao Hong Lan affirmed.

For a more specific example, the head of the health sector said that the contents related to population structure, size, distribution and quality have been regulated in many different laws.

Minister of Health Dao Hong Lan. Photo: Nhu Y

Affirming that in the process of developing the Population Law project, the Ministry of Health always tries to demonstrate the spirit of Resolution No. 21-NQ/TW of 2017 of the Central Committee; especially Conclusion No. 149 of the Politburo on the 5-year review of the implementation of Resolution 21 and most recently Resolution 72-NQ/TW of the Politburo on a number of breakthrough solutions to strengthen the protection, care and improvement of people's health, in order to demonstrate the new spirit in population policy.

A fundamental change in this Population Law is to shift the focus from "Population and Family Planning Policy" to "Population and Development", aiming to synchronously solve issues of population size, structure, distribution and quality in relation to socio-economic development of the country and each locality.

According to the Minister, the goal is to create a legal basis for implementing population policies at a new level. The provisions of the Population Law reflect that spirit when the Government designed the scope of the law with 6 policy groups, including: maintaining replacement fertility; minimizing gender imbalance at birth; adapting to population aging and aging population; improving population quality; strengthening communication, advocacy, education on population and ensuring conditions during implementation.

In the spirit of the framework law, detailed regulations on subjects, scope, and implementation resources will be prescribed by the Government in accordance with each stage of socio-economic development.

Regarding resources, we need to look at both the short-term and long-term. Population policy, solving the problem of population aging, and raising the replacement fertility rate require huge investments. Through studying the report of delegate Nguyen Thien Nhan and international experience, it can be seen that many countries such as Japan and South Korea spend huge budgets on this field, but so far the results are still very challenging.

"We believe that there needs to be participation and synchronous coordination of all ministries, departments and branches," the Minister emphasized.

Source: https://suckhoedoisong.vn/luat-dan-so-chuyen-tu-dan-so-va-chinh-sach-ke-hoach-hoa-gia-dinh-sang-dan-so-va-phat-trien-169251110172114589.htm