Nguyễn Triều Lưu, head of civil status and citizenship at the city Department of Justice, speaks at the seminar to launch the “New Life Page” project in the period from June 2019 to May 2020 in HCM City on Friday. — Photo courtesy of MSD

HCM CITY — An NGO, Research Centre for Management and Sustainable Development, is helping 130 disadvantaged children in HCM City get personal documents, something they might otherwise struggle to do because of their circumstances.

“New Life Page” project seeks to complete the task between June this year and May 2020 with assistance from the city Department of Justice. It gets financial support from the Justice Initiatives Facilitation Fund, a component of the EU Justice and Legal Empowerment Program in Việt Nam.

The project began in 2014 and the centre has so far helped 45 children.

Delegates told a seminar held on Friday to introduce the project that the city has around 1.5 million children, with 350,000 living in migrant and poor households and thousands not having any personal documents.

Without documents, they have no access to education, healthcare, social insurance, or any other public service.

According to Nguyễn Phương Linh, director of the centre, a birth certificate is like a passport for children in their early life and one of the first papers to identify them and help them enjoy the rights of a citizen.

“Through New Life Page, we are proud to support many children. With those papers, children have access to education, public services and social services.”

Nguyễn Triều Lưu, head of civil status and citizenship at the Department of Justice, said: “In the process of granting birth certificates to children in special circumstances, we find that families themselves do not fully understand the importance of identification documents, resulting in difficulties in issuing birth certificates for their children.”

There was one family that applied for a birth certificate for a 10-year-old child in which the parents themselves did not have any personal documents, he said.

“I hope this project will contribute to raising people’s awareness about the importance of having birth certificates for their children, especially disadvantaged families.”

The department would always be ready to support special cases so that no child suffers due to the lack of a birth certificate, he added. — VNS