and environment protection in mountainous areas, the Prime Minister’s Decision 132 on prioritizing investment in infrastructure development, allocation of lands for production and shelter for ethnic minorities; the Prime Minister’s Decision 167 on housing facilitation for ethnic minorities, etc. There are also other operative programmes and policies on education, training, and employment and health care for ethnic minorities, focusing on education universalization, expanding boarding schools, promoting participation of ethnic minorities students in universities or vocational schools, upgrading public health centres to provide free medical treatment to needy ethnic people or assisting ethnic people to access to cultural activities and information, etc. In the period of 2016 – 2020, the National Target Programme on poverty reduction dedicated 900 million US dollars (18,745 billion VND) for ethnic minorities, and the above-mentioned Programme 135 has the budget of nearly 800 million US dollars (15,936 billion VND). 12 ethnicities with particularly small population also receive further assistance. A 90-million-USdollar (1,800 billion Vietnamese dong) programme has been designed specifically to support these ethnicities, whose communities spread in 194 villages in 12 provinces, in the period of 2016 – 2025. Viet Nam’s policies on ethnic minorities affairs has yielded significant achievements, allowing better assurance of the rights of ethnic minorities and improvement of their living standards. Since 2007, 118,530 underprivileged households of ethnic people have been provided with credits, 33,969 households have been assisted in production expansion, and 80,218 households have been supported to expand their husbandry. The poverty rate among households of ethnic minorities has been reduced to 16.8% in 2015, from 35% in 2011. In the health care area, 100% of the communes have public health centres and medical staff, 100% of the district have district healthcare centres with medical doctors. Malnourishment rate among children of ethnic minorities under five has been reduced to under 25%. Various policies has been endorsed to allow free medical check and treatment, health insurance for the ethnic people in underprivileged areas. Malaria, goitre, TB, leprosy, etc., which had once been popular in ethnic minorities communities, have now been effectively prevented. Remarkable progresses are made in control of malnutrition, maternal heath care and child health care. As an outcome of the above mentioned Decision 134 alone, 213,466 households of ethnic minorities now have access to clean water. Education and training for ethnic minority communities also improved. Schools at all levels have been expanded and concretized. Since 2012, 100% of communes have met the target of primary education universalization, with many of them attaining secondary education universalization. The nation-wide enrolment rate is about 98%, and that of ethnic minorities is 95%. All provinces with ethnic minorities have vocational schools, colleges or training schools in the fields of agriculture, economic management, finance, education or medicine. Various forms of boarding schools, semi-boarding schools, pre-university 3