Rights of legal aid beneficiaries and environmental rights: Article 34 of Decree No. 7/CP dated 12/1/2007 on guidelines for implementing 2006 Law on legal aid stipulates: poor people, policy supported groups and other marginalized groups are entitled to legal aid services in eight fields, including environmental law

Dr Truong Thi Quoc Khanh – permenant Deputy of the National Assembly’s Commission on Science, Technology, and Environment – presented at the workshop

IUCN – Legal aid beneficiaries are entitled to, represention by counsel in order to lodge a complaint, to conduct negotiations or during legal proceedings. All of these activities shall be provided at no cost, and be followed-up, monitored by the state legal aid center, lawyers, or legal counselors.

The aim of providing legal aid services for the poor and marginalized groups is to protect their rights and interests, and to improve their legal knowledge. It also aims to avoid needless loss of business. Thus, legal aid plays an important role in raising people’s awareness on environment, and poverty eradication. Environment is closely linked with poverty, thus poverty can induce vulnerable communities (who are heavily dependant on local natural resources) to increase use of natural resources, causing overexplointation and the exhaustion of these resources. Poverty will lead to the lack of investment on environment. In additions, the growth at no costs strategy and population boom in Viet Nam will suplement to this, causing the serious environmental problems. Tiếp tục đọc “Vietnam: Problems in enforcing environmental law and ensuring environmental rights for legal aid beneficiaries” →