Vietnam

Workshops and nationwide conference on juvenile criminal law in Hanoi

In mid-June 2023, the IRZ held several face-to-face events in Hanoi with the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Prosecutor's Office on juvenile criminal law. These events are embedded in the German-Vietnamese dialogue on the rule of law between the Justice Ministries of both countries, which was implemented in 2010.

The Supreme People's Court is responsible for modernising the juvenile criminal law and plans to pass its own juvenile court law in 2024. Based on the translated draft law, the main features of German juvenile criminal law were discussed and recommendations made in a one-day workshop with around 40 participants.

The talks focused on:

• The aims of juvenile criminal law and the concept of education
• The scope of application of the Juvenile Court Act and system of legal consequences of juvenile offences with its own sanction system
• The aims, criteria and forms of the diversion
• The tasks and duties of juvenile legal support agencies

The theoretical basics were supplemented by the IRZ training film “Theft of a jacket and its consequences: a main hearing in juvenile criminal proceedings”. The expertise required for the events was provided by the German juvenile court judge Annette Eisenhardt from Berlin and the Deputy Prosecutor General of Schleswig-Holstein, Prof. Dr. Georg Güntge, who gave a clear and fascinating explanation of the various process steps. At the explicit request of the Supreme People's Court, the legal training film was also shown at the nationwide conference of the Supreme People's Court on 15 June, where approx. 10,000 judges took part online along with 300 participants.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate was the partner for the two-day workshop involving approx. 60 participants and focused on aspects of criminal prosecution and the monitoring of criminal proceedings, including human rights guarantees for female and juvenile offenders. The legal training film was also shown here which, following the overwhelmingly positive response, both the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate are planning to use for training purposes at their own advanced training academy. The German team of experts used examples in practice to convey the observance of human rights and the rights of the accused in measures involving deprivation of liberty, and analysed the specific features of juvenile criminal law.

These events enabled the IRZ use a film to raise awareness of differentiated criminal law for young persons in an important phase of the modernisation of juvenile criminal law and to potentially incorporate various elements into the legislation. The IRZ will continue to assist the development of juvenile criminal law in Vietnam.

Study Trip to Berlin and Karlsruhe by the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam

In early July 2022, IRZ joined with the Federal Ministry of Justice to organise a high-ranking study trip to Berlin and Karlsruhe for the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam as part of the German-Vietnamese Rule of Law Dialogue. Led by Chief Justice Nguyen Hoa Binh, the eleven-strong delegation included judges from the Supreme People’s Court and the Hanoi District People’s Court, the director of the Supreme People’s Court Academy and representatives from other departments.

Vietnam has initiated a long-term strategy aimed at strengthening and improving the rule of law. The Vision 2045 development strategy includes plans for extensive structural reforms for the period from 2021 to 2030, which will also extend to the judicial field. Among the goals is to achieve a clearer delineation of task and powers assigned to government bodies at the legislative, executive and judicial levels. Nguyen Hoa, Chief Justice of the Supreme People’s Court, is at the heart of these reforms – as a member of the Politburo, he is in charge of implementing reforms of the judiciary within the framework of this rule of law programme. Against this backdrop, the Supreme People’s Court of Vietnam had asked for expert talks on court organisation and administration, special court jurisdiction, lay jurisdiction (lay judges) and juvenile jurisdiction.

This brief visit started at the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin, where, after a video greeting by State Secretary Dr Angelika Schlunck, the delegation shared views with speakers from various departments on the structure of the court system in Germany, including criminal jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the states, as well as on juvenile criminal law. The concept of juvenile court assistance as well as diversion met with great interest, which was well illustrated during a subsequent visit to the Berlin-Tiergarten Local Court, which included practical explanations of sanctioning practice in German juvenile criminal law, as well as a tour of the facilities for victims and witness support for children and juveniles.

The highlight of the study trip was a visit to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, where key issues of court administration such as the allocation of cases and the stages of proceedings (appeals, complaints against denial of leave to appeal) were addressed in more detail. The delegation provided a summary of Vietnam’s extensive reform projects in the judicial field and stressed the particular significance of comparing legal systems in discussions with colleagues from the highest German court of general jurisdiction as part of the visit agenda.

A translation of the German Judiciary Act and the Youth Courts Act into Vietnamese was requested by the head of the delegation, as draft laws must be submitted to the National Assembly by May 2023, in which the European rules should be taken into account. The translated laws will be made available to the Vietnamese side shortly.

After completing the talks in Germany, the delegation travelled on to France for more technical discussions.