Non-discrimination

Training future lawyers to ensure justice for people with disabilities

Good lawyers with knowledge, right attitudes and perspectives about persons with disabilities can help break barriers and open doors for them to the workplaces and the whole society .

Press release | 12 November 2013
 
HANOI (ILO News) – Future lawyers and judges are expected to better protect the rights of people with disabilities in Viet Nam as the disability law has become part of the curriculum at the Hanoi Law University.

The first 850 undergraduate law students have been trained in the Law on Persons with Disabilities since 2012 with the support from the Irish Government and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The law came into effect in 2011 to promote the rights of more than 7 million people with a disability – or nearly 8 per cent of the Vietnamese population.

“Viet Nam has made good progress in promoting disability rights by putting them in its legislation but how to enforce the law is even a more difficult task,” ILO Viet Nam Director, Gyorgy Sziraczki, said during an event organized on 12 November to celebrate the partnership between the Hanoi Law University, the ILO and Irish Government.

“This is where you need good judges and lawyers with knowledge, right attitudes and perspectives about persons with disabilities to break barriers and open doors for them to the workplaces and the whole society,” he added. “It’s even better if students with disabilities themselves are trained to become lawyers.”

Only a few people with disabilities in Viet Nam have a stable job and regular incomes. Compared to other workers’ groups, their unemployment rate is much higher, at about 30 per cent.

You need good judges and lawyers with knowledge, right attitudes and perspectives about persons with disabilities to break barriers and open doors for them to the workplaces and the whole society."
The number of persons with disabilities that have access to loans and vocational training opportunities remains low. Out of 1.5 million people receiving vocational training every year across Viet Nam, less than 0.4 per cent are those with a disability. In another example, only 1 per cent of the 8,000 members of the Hanoi Association of Disabled Persons have had access to micro-finance over the last two years.

The ILO estimated that Viet Nam loses about 3 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product as the result of the exclusion of persons with disabilities from the labour market.

“It’s a huge waste of potentials,” Mr Sziraczki said.

Within the same cooperation framework with the ILO and Irish Aid, the Hanoi Law University also increased and improved researches of students and lecturers in disability equality legislation.

“The cooperation has even initiated the necessity of bringing human rights of people with disabilities into many other courses and research areas of our university,” Professor Nguyen Ngoc Hoa, the university Vice Rector, said.