Directive 24 and restriction of fundamental freedoms

Viet Nam’s Directive 24 , a secret Communist Party order restricting independent labor organizing and civil society activity, was one of the most contentious issues during the review. Grave concerns were raised as the directive appeared to be used to justify wide-ranging restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, movement, and peaceful assembly in the name of “national security”. The work of civil society and their engagement with international human rights mechanisms as well as independent media were seen to be “threats” and severely restricted.

The Committee questioned its compatibility with the ICCPR, especially articles 19 on freedom of expression, 21 on the right of peaceful assembly, and 22  on freedom of association, as well as Committee’s General Comment No.34 on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including about legal safeguards, independent oversight of its application and accountability. However, the response of Viet Nam was largely a general defense of the "necessity" of the directive to protect national security, even citing ICCPR article 1 to justify policies preserving political stability. No concrete information or clarification was given to Committee’s questions.

Indigenous Peoples and members of ethnic and religious minority groups

The Committee asked a number of questions about the situation of Indigenous Peoples and ethnic and religious minorities in Viet Nam. Although there were groups with distinct languages, spiritual practices, and ties to ancestral land who should be regarded as Indigenous Peoples from the perspective of international standards, Viet Nam refused to recognise them as such or engage with the concept of indigenous during the review.

Various concerns were raised over systemic discrimination, socio-economic marginalisation, lack of access to education, health care and employment, land grabbing and forced displacement, restriction on religious practices and language usage, surveillance, harassment, arbitrary detention and reprisals. Unfortunately, the response from Viet Nam only emphasised on the alleged equality before the law and infrastructure development, but no direct or clear answers were given to the Committee.

Death penalty as State secret

While acknowledging the decrease in the number of capital offences from 18 to 10, the Committee expressed serious concerns over the application of the death penalty in Viet Nam. In particular, the death penalty seemed to be imposed on crimes related to drug trafficking and corruption. Moreover, no detailed statistical or disaggregated data was provided on the death penalty as Viet Nam insisted that it was State secret. Forced confessions, treatment of prisoners sentenced to death penalty, lack of advance notice to families about executions and inadequate access to legal counsel were other concerns expressed by the Committee.

Viet Nam alleged that certain groups were excluded from the application of the death penalty, such as persons under 18 or over 75, pregnant women and women with children less than 36 months, and persons with terminal illness. However, it failed to address key questions about due process and wrongful convictions, limitation of death penalty for most serious crimes, or about its position and intention toward abolition.

Watch the review session again here (day 1) and here (day 2).

Disclaimer: Transcripts of the dialogue available here powered by WIPO Speech-to-Text served as the main source of the presented article. While all the information was carefully checked, please refer to the audio or UN WebTV for an official version of the dialogue.

Recommendations of the Human Rights Committee

The Concluding Observations on Viet Nam’s fourth periodic report were released on ???th July 2025. The State party is requested to provide, by ???th July 2028, information on the following recommendations: