by Vu Kim Chung
11-6-2001
Four million children from Vietnam's ethnic minorities suffered from poverty and were extremely vulnerable, compared with others from the majority group, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on June 11, 2001.
"Children belonging to ethnic minority groups generally find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder from the day they are born," UNICEF Vietnam's representative Morten Giersing said in a statement. "While Vietnam is generally moving forward, the burden of poverty among ethnic minorities is carried on from one generation to the next."
The statement said children from minority groups were facing serious and multi-faceted hardships, often having had to work at an early age and many of them suffering from constant hunger. Only one fifth of the children in minority groups complete secondary school and many girls are forced to get married and give birth while still under-aged, it said.
Vietnam has 53 minority groups and most of them live in remote and mountainous areas. The only majority group, the Kinh (the true ethnic Vietnamese), account for 88 percent of the population. Around 31 million of Vietnam's 80 million population are under 18 years old.
UNICEF said it planned to spend $70 million in the 2001-2005 period for projects in 66 impoverished Vietnamese districts, many of which are largely populated by ethnic minority families.
The organisation said earlier in June that children of ethnic minorities in Vietnam were facing the greatest risk of malnutrition due to irregular access to adequate food.