The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Viet Nam Women’s Union (VWU) and the project “Empowerment of women: women's leadership in the period of international economic integration” (EOWP) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on November 14th in Ha Noi held a workshop themed “Gender mainstreaming in the draft Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents.” Addressing at the workshop, VWU President Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa underlined the importance of gender mainstreaming in the draft laws to perform the Article 21 of the Law on Gender Equality that regulates gender mainstreaming in the formulation of legal documents, particularly gender mainstreaming in the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents, a meaningful law in the law system. Dang Dinh Luyen, Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly’s (NA) Committee for Legal Affairs said that the draft Law emphasizes policy analyzing process, regulates the responsibility of organizations, individuals taking part in the law making process. Particularly, it stipulates the responsibility of some agencies in indentifying gender and mainstreaming gender equality into law formulation. According to Nguyen Manh Cuong, Permanent Member of the NA’s Committee for Legal Affairs, provisions of the draft Law ensures principles on gender equality. However, it needs to legalize some provisions to meet the reality of Decree, Circular on gender mainstreaming in the formulation of legal documents such as supplementing and clearly regulating the role of social criticism of the VWU on gender equality; amending provisions on gender mainstreaming when a project has gender-related issues toward specifically regulating legal document projects that must create gender mainstreaming report, etc. He also noted that there are not regulations to deal with limitations on the responsibility of agencies and organizations in gender mainstreaming yet. The responsibility in collecting and adjusting contents that need gender mainstreaming in the draft Law is not clearly regulated yet, he added.

(Tamguong.vn – November 15 - http://www.tamguong.vn/nong/683170/long-ghep-binh-dang-gioi-trong-van-ban-luat-tpov.html; CPV Online – November 14 - http://dangcongsan.vn/cpv/Modules/News/NewsDetail.aspx?co_id=30106&cn_id=685626; Khoe360.tienphong.vn – November 14 - http://khoe360.tienphong.vn/gia-dinh-suc-khoe/hoi-thao-binh-dang-gioi-783507.tpo; Nhan Dan p3 – People’s Daily – November 15)