Hanoi (VNA) – Belgium’s Queen Mathilde, who isHonorary President of UNICEF Belgium, wrapped up her three-day visit to Vietnam, which highlighted the Southeast Asian country's significant achievements towards realising child rights aswell as the key challenges the most vulnerable children still face.

UNICEF Vietnam said in a press release on May 11 that during her visit, Queen Mathilde witnessed how UNICEF Vietnamsupports the Government to close equity gaps and expand opportunities for themost vulnerable children. She also interacted with children, teachers, mothersand fathers, health workers and Government officials, learning first-hand aboutVietnam’s progress for every child.

“I have witnessed Vietnam’s progress towards ensuringits children are healthy, safe, educated, protected and empowered to reachtheir full potential,” she remarked. “There are still many challenges, but thisvisit has reaffirmed for me that there are innovative and creative approachesbeing designed and tested that greatly enhance the opportunities and improvethe wellbeing of children across this country”.


At her meetings with President Vo Van Thuong andlater, the Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son, the Queenreferred to Vietnam’s achievements and learnt about national efforts to addresschildren’s issues working closely with UNICEF.

She also recognised that this year marks 50 years ofclose collaboration between Vietnam and Belgium, “an opportunity forstrengthening the longstanding ties of friendship and cooperation between thetwo countries.”

Following these discussions, she travelled to thenorthern mountainous province of Lao Cai, where she witnessed new approachespiloted by the Ministry of Education and Training, with UNICEF support, toimprove the quality of learning and digital literacy among the youngest ethnicminority girls and boys.


The Queen observed how Augmented Virtual Reality (AVR)is being used to nurture curiosity, joyful learning and transferable skills forpreschool students. This pilot programme is closing the digital divide forchildren in remote, mountainous regions and ensuring that ethnic minoritychildren, who are least likely to complete primary and secondary school, get thebest possible start to their education.

She also visited a community-based nutrition club,where she met mothers learning to better use local products to preparenutritious meals for their families, particularly their young children. Theclubs, initially launched with UNICEF support, are an example of where provenapproaches are tested and scaled up by Government to reach even more children.In Lao Cai, the local health authorities have adopted this approach as a partof their efforts to reduce malnutrition rates in Lao Cai province in a contextwhere child stunting rates reach over 37%.

On her last day in Vietnam, the Queen sat with a groupof adolescents to talk about their concerns and mental wellbeing. She waspleased to note the work underway to promote positive mental health throughactions that help children and adolescents to adopt and maintain healthylifestyles, encouraging UNICEF and its partners to increase efforts tostrengthen service provision, including by increasing budget allocation formental health, integrating mental health into all social sectors, and improvingreferral systems at health-care facilities, schools and social welfare units./.