Evaluating the draft Law on Civil Status from a human rights perspective

“Overview of the Civil Status Law Project - from the perspective of human rights” is the theme of the first Legal Policy Dialogue Forum in 2014 co-organized by the Ministry of Justice and the United Nations Development Program on the morning of March 19 in Hanoi.

Deputy Minister of Justice Hoang The Lien and Country Director of the United Nations Development Program in Vietnam, Ms. Louise Chamberlain, co-chaired the Forum.

Illustration photo: VNA

Deputy Minister of Justice Hoang The Lien stated that civil status is the registration and management of personal events of each individual from birth to death such as: birth, marriage, adoption, guardianship, change of civil status, death certificate...

These events are directly and closely related to individuals' personal identities; civil registration creates a legal basis for people to enjoy their legitimate rights and interests as citizens, and at the same time creates a basis for the State to protect those legitimate rights and interests.

United Nations Development Programme Country Director in Vietnam Louise Chamberlain welcomed the proposal to cut nearly half of administrative procedures in the draft Law and hoped that these reforms would help people receive better services.

She said the main challenge was to ensure uniformity in the law on principles of equality and non-discrimination, especially those relating to marriage, de facto relationships, children's rights, etc.

The Civil Status Law Project is built with the aim of creating a stable, unified, and long-term legal basis for civil status registration and management in Vietnam in a professional and modern direction, thereby promoting human rights and civil rights, facilitating people to exercise their rights and obligations to register civil status, and strengthening population management in the new situation.

Director of the Department of Civil Status, Nationality and Authentication (Ministry of Justice) Nguyen Cong Khanh said that the biggest limitation in the civil status system is that legal regulations on civil status are still scattered in many different documents and the documents directly regulating the field of civil status are only Decrees and Circulars.

The draft Law on Civil Status mainly regulates the authority, order and procedures for registering civil status events, including basic events from birth to death to determine a person's personal status. This time, the draft stipulates principles on Personal Identification Numbers, which are established to encode basic personal information on the National Population Database.

The identification number is issued to each individual to meet the information lookup requirements, serving the interests of individuals and state management. The draft law also has provisions with strong reform of administrative procedures, reducing administrative procedures in household registration from 46 current procedures to 25 procedures...

While waiting for the National Assembly to consider and pass the Law on Civil Status, Mr. Khanh proposed to strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of state management of civil status; continue to consolidate, improve and enhance the capacity of cadres and civil servants working in civil status at district and commune levels; strengthen the coordination relationship between relevant sectors and levels, ensure connectivity and communication between civil status management and registration agencies with other relevant agencies in managing and exploiting information and data on civil status...

The United Nations General Recommendation on the draft Law on Civil Status states that it is necessary to allow gender reassignment for transgender people and stipulate conditions for gender reassignment in accordance with international standards; remove regulations that may restrict transgender people from accessing gender reassignment, legal gender change or name change.

The draft Law also needs to have provisions detailing the rights of returned victims of trafficking, specifically regarding nationality, residence registration, birth registration and other issues related to household registration...

At the Forum, delegates listened to representatives of the Ministry of Justice assess the current state of law enforcement related to civil status, an overview of the objectives, viewpoints on the construction and content of the draft Law on Civil Status from the perspective of human rights; the issue of simplifying administrative procedures and citizen papers in the draft Law.

Together with Vietnamese jurists, representatives of United Nations agencies commented and provided additional opinions on the Draft Law in relation to international conventions of which Vietnam is a member.

According to Vietnam+