Land policies have an important role to resolve the poverty and social unrest problems for ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities usually depend on agriculture production in association with land for their living; the ability to switch to other jobs is very low. Most of EMs live with agriculture with the main capital is production land; the poverty rate is high and the majority of poor households are in association with agriculture.

To contribute to the process of planning and completing the land policies for EMs, this consultancy report is oriented to:

• Describe the situation of the livelihoods, the land management and usage of ethnic minorities;
• Analyze the problems of policies, laws related to land to ethnic minorities;
• Propose recommendations on policies in order to ensure the fairness and effectiveness in approaching and using land of ethnic minorities.

The Viet Nam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) is a joint collaboration between the Centre for Community Support Development Studies (CECODES) under the Viet Nam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Viet Nam since 2009, with the close partnership and support of the Centre for Theory Work of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front from 2009-2010, the Front Review from 2010-2012, the Commission for People’s Petitions under the National Assembly Steering Committee in 2012, and the Centre for Research and Training of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front—VFF-CRT from 2013.

The 2012 PAPI survey is the result of several years of fine-tuning. The first PAPI survey was piloted in three provinces in 2009 and then expanded to 30 provinces in 2010. Through these first two iterations, questions were adjusted to better capture citizen experiences. In 2011 PAPI was conducted for the first time in all 63 provinces in Viet Nam. The questions that form the basis of the PAPI findings were also finalized. From this point on, PAPI will not only be able to provide a useful indicator for central and local government performance, but also a metric to assess how performance has changed over time.

PAPI assesses three mutually reinforcing processes: policy making, policy implementation and the monitoring of public service delivery. The dimensions are specifically tailored to Viet Nam’s national and local level contexts. The philosophy behind PAPI’s innovative policy monitoring approach is that citizens are seens as “end-users of public administrative services” capable of assessing governance and public administration in their localities. The end result is Viet Nam’s first publically available dataset providing an objective evaluation of governance from the perspective of citizens. Based on this citizen input, PAPI provides a set of objective indicators that help assess the performance in governance and public administration, while at the same time providing an incentive for provinces to improve their performance over the long term. PAPI is supported substantively and technically by a national advisory board and a group of international governance measurement experts.

CECODES, VFF and UNDP aim to support improvements in transparency; stimulate reform; enlarge the ‘space’ for citizen participation in policy planning, implementation, and monitoring; as well as to significantly expand the pool of quantitative data available for policy formulation and improvement.

The ambit of the study included analysis of nine (9) constituent rights fundamental to the Right to counsel in international human right laws and international customs. In addition the law and practice of three (3) civil law  countries, with broadly  similar legal systems to that of Vietnam, including China, Japan, and Germany were also studied. In addition,  a common law system, Australia, was considered to compare the theory and practice of the right to counsel in Vietnam. These comparisons were included to assist with debates in Vietnam on reforming justice and perfecting the Criminal Procedure Code (amended).

In Vietnam, public consultations have been applied by the executive since the 1980s in the form of taking opinions on the constitution, draft laws and ordinances and on issues of interest to the people. For the National Assembly, public consultations are also of prime importance for the activities of the Ethnic Council and the Committees of the National Assembly (NA), particularly in the drafting of laws, ordinances and resolutions, as well as in the collecting of information and evidence serving the work assigned by the National Assembly and its National Assembly Standing Committee.

The NA Committees have a history of holding some consultations.  Acting on the basis of elements of the Law on Laws 2008, some NA Committees have held public consultations, in the course of which they have made use of certain consultation tools such as consultative meetings, social surveys, and meetings with experts, to collect information and evidence to serve their work.

In this context, the Project “Strengthening the capacity of representative bodies in Viet Nam (Phase 3)” decided to compile “Guidelines on public consultations for the Ethnic Council and the Committees of the National Assembly”. The guidelines will act as a reference work for members of the Ethnic Council and Committees of the National Assembly and their supporting staff, helping them organise consultation activities. The guidelines include the following major contents: the concept of public consultations; the significance of public consultations in activities of the NA Committees; the legal framework of public consultations; steps to conduct public consultations; and details on the tools for public consultations.

Renovation on operations of Ethnic Council and Committees of National Assembly (will be called NA Committees hereafter) is a necessary reform.  Over the past years, numerous solutions have been realized in order to strengthen operation capacities and role of the NA Committees.  In addition, NA Committees and their members should be provided with necessary and useful information and researches on new practices for consideration of suitable application in the context of Vietnam. Among all the researches, the research on possibility of application of committee hearings is one of the new practices which has been often discussed in the past recent years.

In this context, the Project “Strengthening the capacity of representative bodies in Viet Nam (Phase 3)” decided to compile this research report to study on Parliamentary Committee Public Hearings in some countries in the world.  The research report also looks into legal regulations and the practical operations of NA Committees in Vietnam; and analyses the need and possibility of committee hearings application in the NA of Vietnam as well as propose initial application recommendations.