Quyết định 678/QD-TTg

DECISION

APPROVING THE STRATEGY FOR DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL AID IN VIETNAM THROUGH 2020, WITH ORIENTATIONS TOWARD 2030

THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the December 25, 2001 Law on Organization of the Government;

Pursuant to the June 29, 2006 Law on Legal Aid;

At the proposal of the Minister of Justice,

DECIDES:

Article 1. To approve the Strategy for development of legal aid in Vietnam through 2020. with orientations toward 2030, promulgated together with this Decision.

Article 2. This Decision takes effect on the date of its signing.

Article 3. Ministers, heads of ministerial-level agencies, heads of government-attached agencies, chairpersons of provincial-level People's Committees and related agencies, organizations and individuals shall implement this Decision.

STRATEGY

 FOR DEVELOPMENT OF LEGAL AID IN VIETNAM THROUGH 2020, WITH ORIENTATIONS TOWARD 2030
(Promulgated together with the Prime Minister's Decision No. 678/QD-TTg of May 10, 2011)

Legal aid for the poor and policy beneficiaries constitutes a major undertaking of the Party and the State to realize the principle that all citizens are equal before law, which is enshrined in Article 52 of the 1992 Constitution, and contribute to ensuring social justice. In furtherance of the Resolutions of the third plenum of the Party Central Committee of the VIII^th Congress, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 734TTg of September 6, 1997, establishing the system of state-run legal aid organizations, comprising the National Legal Aid Agency of the Ministry of Justice and 63 state-run legal aid centers under provincial-level Departments of Justice. Through 14 years of its operation, the legal aid system has strongly developed, making practical contributions to protecting the rights and legitimate interests of more than 1.4 million people and participating in law education and dissemination for millions of people. It has also positively contributed to the process of law enforcement, ensuring human rights, increasing people's legal knowledge, practicing democracy, social progress and justice, stabilizing people's livelihood, promoting hunger elimination and poverty reduction, and accelerating economic development in the context of national renewal.

Through legal aid activities, the awareness of agencies, organizations and citizens about the objectives, position, role and significance of law has been raised. All matters and cases related to citizens' rights and obligations must be settled on the basis of law and according to law. Legal aid organizations have become reliable addresses for people to come, access and use law to protect their rights and legitimate interests when encountering problems, or to enquire into law. They also provide legal support for concerned agencies, organizations and individuals when settling citizens' matters and cases. Legal aid has exerted positive impacts on the quality of official-duty performance, legal system consolidation and law, which is application, making important contributions to judicial and administrative reforms and the building of a socialist law-governed state of the people, by the people and for the people. Recently, legal aid has always received the attention and leadership of the Party, the management and investment of the State and the participation and support of the society as well as international community.

I. DEVELOPMENT VIEWPOINTS

1. Legal aid is a form of legal service placed under the strict control by the State of its quality, aimed at ensuring the enforcement of law and protection of the rights and legitimate interests of the poor, persons with meritorious services to the Revolution and people in special circumstances, and contribute to exercising democracy and enhancing socialist legality under the conditions of national renewal, industrialization and modernization.

2. The State plays the key role in organizing the provision of legal aid and promote the sense of proactiveness, voluntariness and active involvement of legal aid providers, proceeding to the stage that the State will play the role of attracting and regulating resources for the model of social organizations participating in legal aid to constantly develop; and the State intensifies its inspection and supervision of the implementation of the law on legal aid and inheritance of the results obtained in the development of the state-run legal aid system.

The State mobilizes and encourages all available resources, social organizations and communities to participate in legal aid, particularly lawyers, jurists and specialists in other social domains and forces; and studies policies to support organizations and individuals when they provide legal aid.

3. Legal aid development must conform to the process of judicial and administrative reforms, legal system building and perfection, law enforcement mechanisms and justice sector development orientations. Legal aid policies in treaties which Vietnam has acceded to shall be promptly institutionalized and implemented, contributing to the exercise of human and civic rights and the protection of justice and to the enhancement of adversary argument at court and raising of the quality of official-duty performance and the sense of responsibility of cadres and civil servants for serving the people.

4. Legal aid must be linked with and directed to the grassroots level and incorporated in poverty reduction, gratitude practice, social security, mass agitation and ethnic minorities programs, projects and policies in order to associate economic growth with democracy practice and social justice assurance. Special priority will be given to development investment in rural, deep-lying and remote areas, regions facing exceptional socio-economic difficulties, and ethnic minority and mountainous areas, fully meeting the people's needs for legal aid.

5. To increase investment in, and renew forms and modes of legal aid toward modernization, application of scientific and technological advances and quality raising. To further develop legal aid toward common standards on service quality according to requirements of international integration.

II. DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES

1. General objectives

To develop legal aid in a stable and sustainable manner and to provide quality legal aid services in a timely and adequate manner for legal aid beneficiaries on the basis of bringing into play the State's key role in organizing legal aid, mobilizing to the utmost social resources as well as assistance of the international community, agencies, organizations, enterprises and individuals, contributing to the best protection of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens when they encounter legal problems, the protection of justice and social justice, the higher effectiveness of official-duty performance and sense of law observance and the translation of law into life.

2. Specific objectives for different periods

a/ Development objectives for the 2011-15 period:

To provide quality and effective legal services, largely meeting eligible people's needs for legal aid on the basis of bringing into play the core role of legal aid providers and attracting the active participation of lawyers, jurists and other collaborators in legal aid activities. In this period, the following objectives should be attained:

- To raise awareness about legal aid

+ From 50% to 70% of citizens will be aware of their right to legal aid, information on legal aid organizations and activities and addresses of legal aid organizations via means of communication or grassroots legal aid activities; 80% of communes, wards and townships nationwide and 90% of procedure-conducting agencies will have boards giving information on legal aid at places easily accessible to the public;

+ To intensify legal aid activities at the grassroots level (mobile legal aid, legal aid clubs, specialized law classes, distribution of law leaflets…), giving priority to organizing these activities in mountainous, deep-lying, remote and ethnic minority areas.

- To develop the network of legal aid organizations and the legal aid support network at the grassroots level

+ To consolidate the network of state-run legal aid centers and their branches according to the objectives set in the Scheme on planning of the network of state-run legal aid centers and their branches in the 2008-10 period, with orientations towards 2015, approved by the Prime Minister in Decision No. 792/QD-TTg of June 23, 2008 (below referred to as Decision No. 792/QD-TTg);

+ To mobilize and encourage law-practicing organizations and legal counseling sections of social organizations to register their participation under the objectives set in the Scheme on planning of the network of state-run legal aid centers and their branches; to ensure that 50%-60% of these law practicing organizations and legal counseling sections will participate in providing legal aid;

+ To ensure that 100% of communes, wards and townships in deep-lying and remote areas and regions facing exceptional socio-economic difficulties will set up legal aid clubs for legal aid beneficiaries and people living just above the poverty line, and 50%-6()% of communes, wards and townships nationwide will set up legal aid clubs and maintain their regular activities.

- To raise the quality of human resources

+ To conduct training to raise professional, political, state administration and computer skills levels, ensuring that 60%- 70% of legal aid providers will be rotationally trained in stale management knowledge at expert level; 100% of legal aid providers will be annually trained in new legal documents and skills to provide legal aid for specific groups of beneficiaries and disadvantaged groups;

+ To develop a contingent of 1,000 professional legal aid providers in order to satisfy 98%-100% of legal aid beneficiaries in procedural cases; to further increase their procedural participation in criminal cases and expand their involvement in non-criminal cases;

+ To develop a contingent of some 12,000 collaborators, including lawyers, jurists and other professionals, attaching importance to the development of collaborators who are village patriarchs, hamlet chiefs, heads of clans, prestigious persons in communities, women and ethnic minority people; paying attention to providing training in ethnic minority languages for legal aid providers and collaborators in ethnic minority areas;

+ To expand the participation of legal aid collaborators at training institutions, specialized law research institutions and press and communication agencies in legal aid cases.

- Specific forms of legal aid

+ To meet 90%-100% of the needs for legal aid in the forms of counseling and conciliation right at the grassroots level; to settle 80%-90% of the total number of cases of legal aid requested by eligible persons;

+ To fully satisfy people's legal aid needs in various fields of law: criminal law, criminal procedures and criminal judgment enforcement; civil law, civil procedures and civil judgment enforcement: law on marriage and family and law on children; administrative law. complaints, denunciations and administrative procedures; law on land, housing, environment and consumer protection; law on labor, employment and insurance; law on preferential treatment of people with meritorious services lo the Revolution and law on other social preferences; other fields of law related to national target programs on poverty reduction or directly related to citizens' fundamental rights and interests (Article 34 of the Government's Decree No. 07/2007/ND-CP of January 12, 2007, detailing and guiding a number of articles of the Legal Aid Law);

+ To satisfy 90%-100% of legal aid needs; to ensure that 90% of deep-lying, remote and exceptional socio-economic difficulty-hit communes will be provided with at least one drive of legal aid a year;

+ To ensure that 98%-100% of cases will have legal aid providers or collaborating lawyers to defend, represent or protect the rights and legitimate interests of involved parlies, the accused or defendants entitled to legal aid; about 20%-30% of the cases will receive legal aid immediately from the stage of investigation or institution of criminal cases; and about 30%-40% of law enforcement motions of legal aid organizations will be resolutely settled.

- State management of legal aid

+ To consolidate and upgrade the organizational apparatus and enhance the capability of the National Legal Aid Agency to perform effective state management, especially the state management of service quality and specialized management of legal aid when this activity is further socialized; to regularly review legal documents and guide, direct, check, inspect and assess the quality and constantly train and develop, and raise the quality of. legal aid personnel to be fully capable of providing legal aid to beneficiaries as prescribed by law (poor households, persons with meritorious services to the Revolution, ethnic minority people, victims of violence, persons with disabilities, HIV-infected people, etc.); to intensify international cooperation on legal aid;

+ To enhance capability of provincial-level Departments of Justice to assist the chairpersons of provincial-level People's Committees in performing the state management of legal aid activities in their localities, especially the state management of organizations participating in legal aid in order to ensure the support for and inspect the quality of legal aid services;

+ To apply information technology to legal aid activities; to build and develop a legal aid software for application nationwide; to manage legal aid organizations and activities by information technology; to make construction investment in a database on legal aid cases; to make legal aid statistics according to the indicators of national statistics, justice sector's statistics and specialized legal aid statistics;

+ To attract more funds for legal aid activities corresponding to the development of the legal aid organizational apparatus, personnel, quantity and quality; to study the pilot establishment of branches of the Legal Aid Fund in some regions for mobilization of social contributions;

+ To build or renovate working offices of state-run legal aid centers and their branches towards facilitating people's access and arranging separate reception places for cases involving personal secrets and sensitive cases, ensuring social morality; to provide working facilities and vehicles for legal aid activities as provided in Decision No. 792/QD-TTg.

b/ Development objectives for the 2016-20 period:

To fully and qualitatively satisfy eligible people's needs for legal aid. To study and propose the change of title of legal aid provider into the title of state lawyer. To promote the role of legal aid participants of law practicing organizations, legal counseling sections, training institutions, specialized law research institutions, and press and communication agencies.

- To raise awareness of legal aid

+ 80%- 95% of people will be aware of their rights to legal aid and information on legal aid organizations, conditions, order and procedures;

+ 70%-80% of people, when approaching law enforcement agencies will be advised on and guided in their right to legal aid;

+ 100% of officers in citizen-receiving bodies, state administrative agencies and procedural agencies firmly grasp regulations on legal aid and citizens* right to legal aid.

- To develop the network of legal aid organizations and the network of legal-aid support at the grassroots level.

+ To ensure adequate state personnel to provide intensive legal aid in different fields of law. To consolidate the apparatus of branches of state-run legal aid centers to ensure their independence in operation and responsibility for legal aid;

+ To mobilize to the utmost and encourage law practicing and legal counseling organizations to register their participation in legal aid, ensuring adequate resources for providing legal aid to meet the people's diverse requirements;

+ To set up legal aid clubs for eligible people in 100% of communes, wards and townships and maintain their regular activities;

+ To mobilize the participation of legal staffs of training institutions, specialized law research institutions and press and communication agencies in legal aid activities.

- To raise the quality of human resources

+ To develop a contingent of about 1.500 state legal aid providers and about 20.000 legal aid collaborators, including lawyers, jurists and other legal workers; to attach importance to developing legal aid collaborators who are women or ethnic minority people, people who know ethnic minority languages, village patriarchs, hamlet chiefs, clan heads, social activists and prestigious persons in the communities;

+ To ensure that 100% of legal aid providers will be trained in appropriate forms to raise their professional qualifications, state administration and political knowledge, computer and legal aid skills so as to be capable of providing legal aid in different forms: counseling, procedural participation and conciliation, and skills of coordinating professional activities and organizing and settling legal aid cases, managing legal aid collaborators as well as providing community legal aid.

- Specific legal aid activities

+ To strive for the target that 100% of legal counseling and conciliation needs of legal aid beneficiaries will be satisfied at the grassroots level;

+ To ensure that 100% of deep-lying, remote and exceptional socio-economic difficulty-hit communes will be provided with mobile legal aid at least once a year;

+ To appoint state lawyers or collaborating lawyers to participate in legal proceedings in 100% of cases with involved parties, the accused, defendants and persons with related interests and obligations eligible to and seeking legal aid to represent, defend and protect their rights and legitimate interests;

+ To participate in extra-procedural representation and other forms of legal aid in more than 90% of cases in which eligible persons seek legal aid, of which about 50% of cases will receive legal aid right at the stage of investigation or institution of criminal cases: about 50% of law enforcement motions of legal aid organizations will be resolutely settled on the basis of close coordination with law enforcement agencies.

- Enhancement of state management

+ To consolidate the organizational apparatus and enhance the capacity of public employees of central agencies performing the state management and specialized management of legal aid; to renew the mechanism for state management of legal aid at local levels corresponding to the development of the network of legal aid organizations, especially the development of the network of social and community legal aid organizations. To expand the categories of legal aid beneficiaries to the group of people living just above the poverty line and disadvantaged groups in general;

+ To strongly apply information technology to and upgrade software applications in legal aid provision and management of legal aid organizations and activities; to build a database on legal aid cases with scientific, flexible, adequate and accurate data to meet management, statistical and scientific research requirements;

+ To invest funds and physical foundations for legal aid activities corresponding to task requirements and organizational apparatus and personnel, meeting people's needs in legal aid cases in all fields of law.

c/ Development orientations towards 2030:

After 10 years' implementing the Strategy, to perfect the legal aid model on the basis of comprehensive assessment of the organizational and operational models of state-run and social legal aid organizations; to assess the appropriateness and efficacy of the legal aid models, their capability to satisfy people's legal aid needs, renew and perfect the methods of quality management and control. Thereby, to lay foundations for the continued renewal of legal aid organizations and operation towards:

- Expanding the categories of legal aid beneficiaries, paying attention to disadvantaged or vulnerable groups in the society, overseas Vietnamese and people defined in treaties which Vietnam has acceded to;

- Fully defining the legal status and building the contingent of legal aid providers in their capacity as state lawyers towards specialization and professionalism. Building a modem legal aid provider management and legal aid service quality control system with information technology. Enhancing self-management of the profession and ethics, responsibility and social obligations on the basis of developing and consolidating the professional association of legal aid providers;

- Fully satisfying people's legal aid needs with high quality, reaching the standards corresponding to regional legal service standards; developing the networks of legal aid provided by the State and legal aid provided by law practicing and legal counseling organizations; narrowing the gap in service quality and capability to satisfy the legal aid needs between rural and urban areas and between delta and mountainous regions. Legal aid beneficiaries may easily access and use legal aid services, particularly those provided online and via the Internet:

- Ensuring that 100% of legal aid providers will meet the professional qualification and ethic requirements so as to guarantee the rights of legal aid beneficiaries to choose their own legal aid providers and have their rights and legitimate interests represented, defended and protected at procedure-conducting bodies;

- Perfecting and basically modernizing the organizational and operational models of legal aid organizations toward socialization and professionalism; renewing and upgrading the database on legal aid cases, and proceeding to providing legal aid in the mass media and online.

III. STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION SOLUTIONS

1. General solutions

a/ To further improve the law on legal aid to create adequate legal grounds for legal aid organization and operation.

b/ To intensify communication activities with a view to raising the awareness of agencies, organizations and individuals about legal aid organizations and activities.

c/ To incrementally upgrade the physical foundations and working facilities for legal aid organizations.

d/ To develop the Vietnam Legal Aid Fund, study and institutionalize the expansion of the Fund's branches in localities in order to attract more contributions from domestic and foreign organizations and individuals to legal aid activities.

e/ To define the responsibility for coordination in legal aid provision between agencies and organizations and legal aid organizations and providers.

f/ To increase preferences for legal aid providers, applying the regime of timely commendation in order to encourage persons with great contributions to legal aid activities and to attract the participation of social forces.

g/ To intensify international cooperation with a view to making full use of experience in organizing legal aid activities and financial assistance of other countries and international organizations.

2. Solutions for the 2011-15 period

a/ To organize theoretical study and practical review of major issues on organizational models, mobilize resources in preparation for the revision of the Legal Aid Law and relevant procedural laws. To intensify guidance, direction, inspection and examination of legal aid organizations and activities in localities, detect in time errors to ensure that legal aid activities are carried out strictly according to regulations and meet the legal aid needs of disadvantaged groups in localities, and that quality control of legal aid cases are carried out regularly and effectively;

b/ To further develop and consolidate the network of branches of state-run legal aid centers under Decision No. 792/QD-TTg in order to ensure that people may approach legal aid organizations more easily. To work out solutions to developing more branches of state-run legal aid centers in communes of mountainous, deep-lying and remote districts: lo continue studying and institutionalizing the full legal status of such branches to facilitate their independent operations in line with administrative and judicial reforms;

c/ To additionally supply personnel for the National Legal Aid Agency in order to raise the legal aid capability for potential legal aid providers. To foster legal aid providers in order to form a contingent of state lawyers on the basis of attracting other lawyers and graduates from lawyer training courses; to adopt policies to encourage prominent lawyers to work as legal aid collaborators; to work out measures to encourage and support newly graduated bachelors of law to attend training to become legal aid providers;

d/ To consolidate and upgrade the organizational apparatus of the National Legal Aid Agency and raise its capacity in order to assist the Minister of Justice in fully performing the legal-aid state management as well as specialized management tasks strictly according to law, especially the state management of legal aid service quality, in training in legal aid capability and skills, managing and widely attracting financial contributions through the Vietnam Legal Aid Fund to support the development of state-run and social legal aid networks; to raise the capabilities of provincial-level Departments of Justice to assist the provincial-level People's Committee chairpersons in performing the state management of legal aid in localities;

e/ To formulate regimes and measures to attract and encourage political organizations, socio-political organizations, socio-political-professional organizations, socio-professional organizations, research institutions, lawyers training institutions and press and communication agencies to participate in legal aid provision;

f/ To study, formulate and implement schemes for different regions: A scheme for mobilization of social resources for legal aid with a view to forming a legal aid professional association for participation in research, formulation and suggestion of legal aid policies and law, skill training and professional ethics and responsibility improvement, and social counter-arguments on legal aid policies and law; a scheme on legal aid communication in order to raise the awareness of cadres, civil servants and people about the right to legal aid of disadvantaged groups and legal aid organizations and activities and to raise the responsibility of the mass media for propagating and disseminating this activity; a scheme on mobilization of financial resources for legal aid aimed at studying measures to raise the contributions of organizations, enterprises and individuals to the Vietnam Legal Aid Fund; a scheme on application of scientific and technological advances to legal aid with a view to increasing the capacity for scientific and technological application to legal aid need surveys, statistics and support operations; a scheme on formulation of the institution of state lawyer aimed at increasing the professionalism of legal aid providers;

g/ To intensify the exchange, sharing and learning of experiences in the development of legal aid models of other countries in the region and the world in order to widely develop typical ones, draw experience lessons, inherit and select their strengths for putting forward legal aid development policies suitable to Vietnam's realities and serving as a basis for revising and improving the law on legal aid.

3. Solutions for the 2016-20 period

a/ Regarding institutions:

-To study and review the implementation of the Legal Aid Law and propose amendments thereto, define appropriate titles for legal aid providers in state-run legal aid organizations as state lawyers; to consolidate the system of legal aid organizations toward specialization according to different fields of law, maintain the local administration's responsibility for arranging physical foundations for these organizations while ensuring their professional independence within a professional hierarchy;

- To further improve institutions and policies in order to ensure the consistency, synchronism and feasibility of the legal system on state lawyer institutions in the procedural codes and relevant laws;

- To further improve under international standards the quality assessment of legal aid organizations and supervision of results of settlement of legal aid cases; standards on forms, process and effectiveness of legal services; criteria for the establishment of legal aid organizations; to set criteria for ranking legal aid organizations; to make statistics on legal aid; ensure gender equality and legal equality for ethnic minority people, overseas Vietnamese and other groups in accordance with treaties which Vietnam has acceded to; to expand the categories of legal aid beneficiaries to the group of people living just above the poverty line and disadvantaged groups in general;

- To finalize the system of regulations guiding the provision of legal aid towards convenience for people and easy application, meeting ISO standards, simplifying procedures for legal aid beneficiaries who are ethnic minority people, disabled persons, people with little education, orphans, victims of violence or human trafficking, etc.

b/ To consolidate, formulate and improve legal aid development policies;

- To study, formulate and improve policies on non-business units providing free legal aid, which are in line with the orientations for development of public non-business units;

- To study, formulate and improve policies on legal aid in programs on poverty reduction and gratitude, policies on ethnic minorities and mass agitation, which are in line with economic development orientations, preserve cultural identity while ensuring social justice, raising people's intellectual standards and ensuring social security in conformity with the nation's fine traditions;

- To study, formulate and improve policies on legal aid in mechanisms and policies to ensure human rights, civic rights, democracy and legality for legal aid to be an effective tool to assist and support people in accessing law and activities of public offices in the exercise and protection of citizens' rights and legitimate interests, contributing to forming the ways of living and working according to law and building a civilized society; to apply diverse legal aid forms suitable to different target groups;

- To study, formulate and improve policies on socialization of legal aid activities with a view to encouraging and mobilizing social organizations, agencies, organizations, individuals, research institutions, training institutions and press and communication agencies to participate in the provision of legal aid and support legal aid development.

c/ To study for modernization of communication activities, application of information technology to the organization and provision of legal aid to people; to intensify cooperative relations with traditional partners.

d/ To further expand cooperative relations with other countries and international organiza­tions sharing a common concern for settlement of legal aid cases involving foreign elements.

4. Solutions for the 2020-30 period

a/ To further improve the institutions on legal aid toward accelerated socialization of legal aid activities and expansion of community-based legal aid. The law on legal aid needs to additionally cover new disadvantaged groups and overseas Vietnamese and groups defined in treaties which Vietnam has acceded to. To ensure harmony between legal aid laws of Vietnam and regional countries.

b/ To enhance the capacity of law practicing organizations and social organizations involved in legal aid so that they will gradually become key legal aid providers, ensuring the professionalism of legal aid services. To develop appropriate mechanisms for attracting outstanding lawyers to participate in legal aid activities. The Slate shall focus on the management and supervision of legal aid provision by law practicing organizations and other organizations participating in legal aid; directly organize the provision of legal aid in areas where social organizations arc not strong enough or for matters and cases difficult to localities. Particularly, to renew modes of quality assessment of legal aid cases by state management agencies in charge of legal aid;

c/ To further modernize communication activities in organizing and providing legal aid services online to the people and diversify modes of providing legal aid. Slate management agencies in charge of legal aid and legal aid organizations should coordinate with specialized information technology organizations in effectively applying scientific and technical advances and assisting people in having the quickest access to information on legal aid and legal aid providers. To intensify the answering of legal queries via the Internet in order to save time and cost for people;

d/ To intensify cooperation with other countries, non-governmental organizations and international organizations with a view lo sharing experiences and attracting technical and financial assistance for legal aid activities; to further conclude cooperation programs; to work out plans on the implementation of legal aid policies in legal aid agreements and treaties which Vietnam has acceded to. To intensify coordination between legal aid organizations of Vietnam and other countries in the region and the world as well as overseas representative offices of Vietnam;

e/ To socialize the Vietnam Legal Aid Fund in order to attract contributions of domestic and foreign enterprises, organizations and individuals to the Fund. To step up the application of information technology so that information on the Fund, the receipt of contributions to the Fund, the use and supervision of the use of Fund's resources will be carried out in a diverse and convenient manner;

f/ To formulate mechanisms for lawyers to fulfill their social responsibility for legal aid activities. Lawyers will be obliged to participate in certain legal aid cases annually without remunerations. Lawyers who are unable to arrange time to such legal aid cases will be obliged to make contributions to the Fund at appropriate levels and in proper form.

IV. ORGANIZATION OF IMPLEMENTATION

1. The Ministry of Justice shall work out specific plans and roadmaps for implementation of the Strategy in each period:

- To assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, concerned ministries and sectors in, guiding provincial-level People's Committees in organizing the implementation of the Strategy; organize the implementation of five-year and annual plans in conformity to socio-economic development plans; to guide, inspect, supervise and review the strategy implementation and annually report thereon to the Prime Minister.

- To organize and direct the realization of contents of the Strategy; to assume the prime responsibility for, coordinate with, and guide ministries, sectors and localities in, organizing, based on their respective functions and assigned tasks, the formulation and implementation of programs, plans, schemes and projects, ensuring their conformity to the objectives, contents and solutions of this Strategy.

- To assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with concerned ministries, sectors, localities and functional bodies in, inspecting and checking the implementation of this Strategy; to conduct annual and five- year preliminary and final reviews, assess and draw experiences from the implementation of the Strategy; to submit to the Prime Minister for decision adjustments to the objectives and contents of the Strategy, in case of necessity.

- To coordinate with concerned ministries and sectors in studying, formulating and submitting to the Prime Minister or competent state agencies for promulgation the schemes stated in Section 3 of Part III.

2. The Ministry of Planning and Investment shall assume the prime responsibility for. and coordinate with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and concerned ministries and sectors in, balancing and allocating annual investment capital according to the State Budget Law. mobilizing domestic and foreign aid for legal aid development in order to effectively implement the contents of the Strategy.

3. The Ministry of Finance shall assume the prime responsibility for. and coordinate with the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Justice in. surveying, studying and determining budget funds to meet legal aid development requirements; to further improve financial mechanism and policies and appropriate financial management mechanisms to ensure effective use of investment sources for legal aid.

4. The Ministry of Home Affairs shall assume the prime responsibility for. and coordinate with the Ministry of Justice in, surveying, studying and determining the state payrolls and formulating appropriate regimes and policies for legal aid providers.

5. The Ministry of Information and Communications shall coordinate with the Ministry of Justice and concerned ministries and sectors in directing the mass media agencies to conduct communication on legal aid organizations and activities.

6. Ministries and sectors shall, according to their respective functions and tasks, organize the implementation of the priority schemes and projects of the Strategy as well as objectives and solutions of the Strategy related to them respectively.

7. Provincial-level People's Committees shall consolidate, according to their respective functions and assigned tasks, the networks of legal aid organizations in their respective localities; ensure adequate state payrolls and material foundations for legal aid activities; enhance the state management of legal aid; study and promulgate plans for activities within their localities (five-year and annual plans) according to this Strategy and local socio-economic development plans in the same period.

8. The Ministry of Justice shall, within the ambit of its function and tasks, manage, direct and create conditions for socio-professional legal aid organizations and the Vietnam Lawyers' Federation to develop networks of legal aid organizations, attract lawyers to provide legal aid and strictly supervise the legal aid cases performed by lawyers.

9. The Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuracy and other procedural bodies are requested to direct the active cooperation of their respective sectors on legal aid in order to raise the quality of procedural participation of legal aid forces.

10. The Vietnam Fatherland Front and its member organizations are requested to actively participate in the supervision of and social counter-argument on legal aid provision. Stale agencies shall work out specific solutions in order to create conditions for social organizations to participate in formulating, counter-arguing, implementing and supervising the implementation of the Strategy; and rally its member organizations and members in legal aid activities; and intensify cooperation with international legal aid societies.-