The 2015 Penal Code prescribes heavy fines for corporate legal persons’ crimes violating regulations on management and protection of endangered, precious and rare wild animals, ranging from VND 300 million to VND 15 billion. This shows that Vietnam is always aware of the nature and danger of these crimes to the ecological environment.

This article takes initial steps in understanding causes and effects of land conflicts in Vietnam after the effect of the 2003 Land Law and its subsequent amendments. It examines institutional arrangements that govern land rights security but may have created biases toward different land users upon conflicting land use purposes. The analysis also examines the values of the two available large sample surveys in Vietnam (the citizen perception-based Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) and the firm perception-based Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI)) in informing potential different treatments toward citizens and firms as land users.

Compared to the 1999 version, the 2015 Penal Code’s provisions on protection of wildlife have been significantly revised toward expanding the scope of application of the monetary penalty, increasing penalties and adding some aggravating circumstances. This article analyzes these regulations and proposes a number of recommendations for more effective protection of endangered, precious, and rare wildlife.

The National Assembly on Monday ratified Convention 105 on Abolition of Forced Labor with 94.82 percent of NA deputies in agreement.

On April 8, 2020, the Government issued Decree 44/2020/ND-CP (Decree 44), prescribing enforcement of judgments against commercial legal persons in a move to detail the 2019 Law on Execution of Criminal Judgments. With this Decree, set to take effect from July, the legal framework for execution of criminal judgments against commercial legal persons has been fundamentally completed, guaranteeing the enforcement of the 2015 Penal Code’s provisions concerning criminal handling of commercial legal persons.

Failing to wear masks in public, reporting inaccurate health statuses or evading quarantine are just some actions that could result in heavy fines or even a criminal trial.

The 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), one of the nine fundamental conventions on human rights, came into force on June 26, 1987, after being ratified by 20 member states[1]. Vietnam acceded to the UNCAT on November 7, 2013, and ratified it a year later. As a member state to the UNCAT, Vietnam has spared no efforts to build its legal system, particularly criminal justice laws including the Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, Law on Custody and Temporary Detention, Law on Execution of Criminal Judgments, Law on Organization of Criminal Investigation, etc., in conformity with the UNCAT.

In Vietnam, since 1945 the law on execution of imprisonment sentences has always considered labor a fundamental element of the inmate education regime. According to the traditional theory of combined punishment and education, labor is always a duty of inmates. Under the 2015 Penal Code (revised in 2017) (the Penal Code), inmates must serve their imprisonment sentences and work and learn so as to become useful to the society[1]. Compared to other daily activities of inmates, their working activities are to be carried out throughout their sentence serving period and exert important effects on their education and reform results. Through these activities inmates can learn working skills and generate some incomes for their future community integration. That’s why the Law on Execution of Criminal Judgments (the Law) seeks to improve the inmate labor regime primarily for raising the effectiveness of inmate education and reform.

The National Assembly promulgated the Anti-Corruption Law last November, extending the fight against corruption in the non-state sector. The Law supersedes its predecessor enacted in 2005 with revisions made in 2007 and 2012 (the 2005 Law).

These include the Law on Competition, Law on Anti-Corruption, Law on the People's Public Security Forces, Law on Special Amnesty, Law on Vietnam Coast Guard, and Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Law on Higher Education