Hanoi (VNA) – Foreign experts andrepresentatives from governmental agencies and local authorities gathered inHanoi on June 29 to discuss experiences, effective strategies and interventionsand policy recommendations for Vietnam in a conference to address child andearly marriage.

The national conference on “Preventing andending child and early marriage: Learning from promising strategies and goodpractices” was held by the Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA), theUnited Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and theIrish Aid.

Opening the event, Vice Chairman of CEMA HaHung said that underage marriage limits girls’ opportunities for education andleads to early pregnancy before their bodies have matured, severely affectingtheir mental and physical development.

Early marriage also put them at greater riskof domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence. Overall, itdirectly affects socio-economic development, resulting in a vicious cycle ofpoverty among ethnic minority groups, Hung noted, adding that it is behind thedecline in quality of human resources and sustainable development of ethnicminority communities.

ShokoIshikawa, Country Representative of UN Women in Vietnam, highlighted that the key to breaking the cycle ofchild and early marriage lies in empowering and investing in girls and women.

Every girl and woman at risk of or affected by child andearly marriage must have access to quality services in education and training,legal and healthcare counselling, including for sexual and reproductive health,housing and others, the UN official stated.

This requires all state bodies to ensure that planning,budgeting, policymaking and monitoring reflects the needs of girls and boys,and that investment in girls’ empowerment is prioritised in all aspects andareas, she added.

In Vietnam,despite the Law on Marriage and Family setting the minimum legal age formarriage at 18 for women and 20 for men, 11 percent of women aged 20-49 yearswere married or in a union before the age of 18, most of whom come fromdisadvantaged regions and ethnic minority groups.

The firstsocio-economic survey of the country’s 53 ethnic minority groups conducted bythe CEMA and the General Statistics Office in 2015 found that the prevalence ofchild marriage among these groups was 26.6 percent; some groups even reportedrates of 50 – 70 percent.

During theconference, delegates discussed the main barriers to preventing and putting anend to early marriage and outlined opportunities for multi-sector cooperationin coping with the issue. They also looked into integrating child marriageinterventions into Vietnam’s development projects and socio-economicprogrammes, especially those exclusively for ethnic minority areas.-VNA