, equality, which includes separate targets where gender concerns are pressing (for example, facilitating legal asset ownership) as well as mainstreaming gender equality across the various sectors.

Ensuring equality in legal ownership of assets - The CPRGS sets explicit targets for improving legal ownership of key assets (especially land) for women. This specifies that all land use certificates will be issued in the names of both men and women (rather than just the male household head) by 2005. This will be important in allowing women access to financial services as well as giving them greater security in case of the death of their husbands, separation or divorce.

Addressing and monitoring gender-based violence - Setting quantitative indicators for the reduction in gender-based and domestic violence is extremely hard. The actions to tackle violence against women outlined in the national strategy for the advancement of women revolve around bringing greater clarity to the legal framework. Indeed, they are part of a goal to improve the gender sensitivity of the legal framework rather than part of a goal against violence. International experience suggests that these actions will need to be supplemented by a more comprehensive package of measures that involve generating attitudinal changes as well as adjusting legal instruments. If these measures are successful, one might reasonably expect an increase in number of reported incidents of gender-based violence as the problem is addressed in a more open manner before the incidence starts to decline. There is, as yet, no reported baseline for the incidence of domestic or gender-based violence in Vietnam — nor are there any good proxy indicators which are readily available or collected. This should be addressed as part of a monitoring system that seeks to measure progress in gender equity.

# Goal Four: Reduce Child Mortality

This section will first discuss achievements, and targets and challenges related to reducing infant and child mortality, and will subsequently focus on reducing child malnutrition. It has been necessary to use a variety of data sources to illustrate the various dimensions of the challenges confronting the health sector and to examine both trends over time and issues of regional and socioeconomic inequality. This means that unfortunately different numbers for the same indicator appear throughout this section. This is illustrative of the problems of data quality — especially for infant, child and maternal mortality — within the health sector®.

## Infant and child mortality: achievements to date

Rapid declines in infant mortality - The infant mortality rate in Vietnam has declined at a remarkable rate by international standards — more than a fifth per decade over the last thirty years. Between 1990 and 1998, the infant mortality rate (IMR) declined from 44 per 1000 to 37 per 1000, while the under-5 child mortality (USMR) declined from 58 to 48 per 1000. This represents a decline of about 17 percent in both indicators. Despite starting from an already low base, Vietnam’s achievements in the 1990s compare favourably with those of other countries in the region. As shown in Table 4, the rate of decline in IMR in Vietnam has been greater than the average rate of decline in the East Asia and Pacific region in South Asia and in all low and middle-income countries.

_ This reduction is less dramatic for the USMR: it is lower than the average rate of decline in the East Asia and Pacific region, which is due to the already low base in 1990 (Table 4).

> ° For example, the VLSS data of 1998 show an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 26.9 per 1000 live births, while the 1999 census gives a figure of 35.6 per 1000.

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