HÀ NỘI — Quality education, good health and well-being, gender equality, zero hunger and poverty, peace, justice and strong institutions are the top goals that Vietnamese youth are ready to strive for.

This was revealed in the first-ever Youth Survey on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) released in Hà Nội on Friday.

At the launch of the survey, Caitlin Wiesen, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Director in Việt Nam, said UNDP had teamed up with the Sustainable Development Office of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) and the Centre for Sustainable Development Studies to conduct this survey.

According to Wiesen, the aim of the survey was to better understand the concerns, perceptions and interests of the youth and which SDG goals they saw as vital for their future.

“It is time to shift the notion of partnering with young people from engaging the youth as beneficiaries to partnering with the youth as agents of change, driving the SDGs and the future they want,” she said.

More than 7,000 young people from all 63 provinces in the country responded to the survey, with nearly three-fourths of the respondents being female. More than 65 per cent of them lived in urban areas. Notably, three out of four respondents said they had not heard about the SDGs.

Coordination and support mechanisms by actors, gender-sensitive approaches, awareness campaigns and public engagement activities are among the key recommendations of the survey to empower the youth to take action in achieving the SDGs.

Đào Đình Tân, director of the Sustainable Development Office under MPI, said Việt Nam had registered to present the voluntary national report on SDGs implementation at the high-level political forum at the United Nations in New York in July this year.

“The results and findings of this survey will be useful inputs for the report that Việt Nam is to present at the forum,” Tân said. — VNS