Voting session to elect members of the Human Rights Council at the UN. Archive photo: Nguyen Huy/VNA

With a people-centered approach, Vietnam has continuously strived to protect and improve people's livelihoods, protect and promote human rights through development, and ensure that development is for the people and by the people. Vietnam has made strenuous efforts to build a socialist rule-of-law state and improved the legal system on human rights.

The 2013 Constitution with a separate chapter on "Human rights, rights and obligations of citizens", and four years later, the adoption of more than 90 human rights-related legal documents have created an important legal framework for practically ensuring human rights and civil rights.

Vietnam has maintained a high level of economic growth, while still focusing on social development with the multidimensional poverty rate decreasing to 4.3% in 2022. The right to education, health care, and housing has been strongly improved.

Gender equality is progressing with the rate of female representatives in the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels reaching over 30%, a rate quite high compared to other countries in the region. Belief and religious life is enriched with thousands of belief and religious festivals taking place every year. Vietnam is one of the countries with the fastest growing rate of Internet users: 78 million people.

Vietnam was elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council for the 2014-2016 and 2023-2025 terms. At these forums, Vietnam has launched initiatives on human rights, especially the rights of women, children, people with disabilities, and those affected by climate change. In 2016 and 2018, Vietnam chaired the introduction of two resolutions on climate change impact on children's rights and women's rights and got the Human Rights Council approved them.

These efforts and achievements in protecting human rights are vivid and convincing evidence to refute distorted reports about Vietnam's human rights situation.