The Necessity of Promulgating the Law on Population

Population Ordinance 2003, after more than 13 years of implementation, has had positive impacts yet also revealed numerous limitations and negative aspects in population work and state management on population such as:

- Many stipulations of the Population Ordinance are highly principled, general, lack specificity, have no sanctioning measures, and have limited feasibility, making them difficult to apply in practice.- Lack of specific regulations on the rights and obligations of couples, individuals, and families in implementing population objectives; the rights and responsibilities of agencies, organizations, and individuals in implementing specific population measures.- Absence of detailed regulations on the content, requirements, and conditions to adjust population issues, leading to a situation of chasing immediate achievements, not ensuring sustainable population and socio-economic development, not aligning with future population trends.- Lack of specific regulations on priority measures, priority levels for the poor, individuals with difficult conditions, and circumstances in using population services; for regions with difficult and exceptionally difficult socio-economic conditions in implementing population measures.

In addition to the aforementioned issues, the Draft Proposal for developing a Population Law Project argues that the regulations in specialized legal documents issued after the Population Ordinance sometimes lack consistency. Specifically:

- Law on Protection of People's Health 1989 provides an optional nature for the number of children per couple (“Each couple should only have one to two children” - Article 43), but the Amended Population Ordinance Article 10 of the Population Ordinance 2003 has a mandatory provision on the number of children per couple, individual (“Having one or two children, except for special cases as stipulated by the Government of Vietnam” Clause 2 Article 1).- The Law on Protection of People's Health 1989 stipulates that women have the right to abortion as they wish, but the Population Ordinance 2003 strictly prohibits abortion for sex selection reasons.

The clearest demonstration is the varying differences in population issues:

- Transition from the objective of reducing birth rates to maintaining a reasonable low birth rate;- Adverse birth rate discrepancies between regions, provinces, and cities;- An increasing trend in infertility, with ineffective intervention measures;- High-level sex ratio imbalance at birth;- Rapid aging population, requiring societal adaptation;- The golden population structure and the need to exploit it for development;- Strong migration changing the population distribution;- Low population quality.

The process of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization in our country is happening much faster than in the previous period, and socio-economic development has a strong impact on societal issues, including population, which occupies a significant part. Population changes demand that legal regulations on population also need to change accordingly to match societal dynamics.

The current Population Ordinance has partially created a legal framework for managing our country’s population; however, practical needs demand a legal framework at the law level to regulate population issues. The Population Law ensures human rights and reproductive rights according to the Constitution 2013; contributes to enhancing the efficiency of state management, the responsibility of agencies, organizations, and individuals concerning population work, overcoming the limitations and inadequacies of existing laws in recent years, meeting practical requirements as the socio-economic situation of the country has changed significantly compared to the time when the Population Ordinance was enacted, requiring changes in viewpoints, objectives, and measures to regulate population issues and ensuring population regulations align with the current legal system and international treaties and commitments that Vietnam has signed or joined.

The above is the full content presented in the Draft Proposal for the Development of a Population Law Project. The proposed outline of the Population Law comprises 8 chapters and 56 articles, including:

1. Chapter I: General Provisions (Articles 1 to 9);
2. Chapter II: Population Scale (Articles 10 to 23);
3. Chapter III: Population Structure and Adaptation to the Demographic Transition Process (Articles 24 to 30);
4. Chapter IV: Population Quality (Articles 31 to 40);
5. Chapter V: Population Distribution (Articles 41 to 44);
6. Chapter VI: Integration of Population Issues in Socio-Economic Development (Articles 45 to 48);
7. Chapter VII: Implementation of Population Work Measures (Articles 49 to 54);
8. Chapter VIII: Implementation Provisions (Articles 55 to 56).

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