A workshop was held in Hanoi on November 27 to seek to perfect a legal
system to protect the environment as well as legitimate rights and
interests of the community.
Co-organised by the the People and
Nature Reconciliation (PanNature) and the Justice Initiative
Facilitation Fund (JIFF), the event brought together more than 100
delegates from State management agencies, the central justice agency,
research institutions and non-governmental organisations.
PanNature
Director Trinh Le Nguyen pointed out that the lack of coordination
between relevant agencies has failed the mechanisms handling complaints
and denunciations related to the environment to protect the right of
people concerned. The delegates proposed establishing a court
specialising in solving environment-related cases and using civilian
expertises to determine the damage caused by environmental pollution.
After
nearly the three decades of renewal, Vietnam reaped remarkable economic
growth and poverty reduction. However, a series of environmental
problems were emerged.
According to statistics of the Central
Cancer Hospital (K hospital), over five recent years, 150,000 cancer
patients were recorded in the country a year, of whom about 70,000 died.
Although environmental pollution is considered one of the
reasons causing diseases and death for human, mechanisms used by
sufferers to lodge related complaints remain unclear, resulting in
unfeasible application in reality.
A report on Justice Index
made by the United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam in 2012
said, nearly 31 percent of the number of respondents says that they are
living in polluted areas and only 12 percent of them sent their
complaints to authorities to ask for the redress.-VNA