Deputy Foreign Minister Ha Kim Ngoc made the remark on the occasion of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s attendance at the high-level Meeting of the 68th Session of the United Nation General Assembly in the US from September 26-28.
The prestige is the obvious result of Viet Nam’s foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development, Ngoc said.
He went on to say that Viet Nam has increasingly participated in the United Nations’ policy-making mechanism by becoming members of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (1998-2000), Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (1991-1993, 1997-1999 and 2003-2005), Executive Board of the United Nations Development Program and Population Fund (2000-2002), United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2001-2003), Administration Council of the Universal Postal Union (1999-2004), International Telecommunication Union (2003-2007) and especially non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (2008-2009).
The country has always been active in contributing to three pillars of peace-security, development and human rights protection.
On peace and security aspect, Viet Nam consistently supports peaceful solutions to all disputes, respects independence and sovereignty of other countries without interfering in their internal affairs.
Viet Nam is a signatory of almost all international disarmament treaties like the Treaty on Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) among others. Viet Nam has always observes and fully implement Resolution No. 1540 of the United Nations Security Council on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Regarding development, from being a poor country, Viet Nam has become a low middle-income nation. Particularly, Viet Nam is one of the countries that has made the most significant progress towards achieving the millennium development goals.
With its endless efforts, Viet Nam was selected on of the first eight countries to pilot “Delivering as One” reform initiative. The success of the initiative here is in large part due to the strong commitment and leadership by the Government, said UN Resident Coordinator Pratibha.
For protection of human rights, Viet Nam is now improving legal framework to better protect citizens’ rights in reality. The current draft version of Constitution covers many specific regulations on human rights. To concretize constitutional regulations, many laws on child protection and education, gender equality, home violence prevention and persons with disabilities have been adopted.
At international forums, Viet Nam advocates dialogues and cooperation in human rights. At present, the country is a party to five out of nine United Nations conventions on human rights.
Viet Nam will certainly foster the diversification and multi-lateralization of relations and active integration into the global community through a range of frameworks and layers to further enhance its role and prestige.
The country will never forget valuable support and assistance from friends around the world during its past struggle for national unification and the current course of development.
On such basis, Viet Nam's stability and development would surely contribute to the common quest of the human rights for peace, independence, democracy and social process./.