The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MOCST) and the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra organizes the opera gala concert in promotion for gender equality and empowerment of women.

This is also UNFPA’s contribution to Vietnam’s National Action Month for Gender Equality.

The 2021 Opera Gala Concert is organized following the first ever successful Symphony Concert in 2020 with the theme “Girls deserve to shine”.

Under the direction of the well-known conductor – Mr. Honna Tetsuji, the Opera Gala Concert features 7 successful Vietnamese opera singers, namely Dao To Loan/Soprano; Bui Thi Trang/Soprano; Le Vanh Khuyen/Soprano; Huong Ly/Soprano; Tung Lam/Tenor; Truong Linh/Tenor and Nguyen Duc Huy/Bariton, for world’s popular works by Gioachino Rossini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gaetano Donizetti, Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi.

Ms. Tran Tuyet Anh, the Director of Family Department – Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism highlighted the important contributions of the Opera Gala Concert.

She said: “We hope through this concert we can create a movement of soft power, bringing about a strong message to every family to eliminate domestic violence against women and girls. The Opera Gala Concert “Girls deserve to shine” will boost the confidence and the honor of being girls”.

Gender equality in Vietnam has improved over the past decades, however, domestic violence and gender-biased sex selection are still widespread in the country.

In Vietnam, nearly 2 out of 3 women experienced one or more form of violence in their life time. And domestic violence is hidden in Vietnamese society, as more than 90% of women never sought any services, and more than half never told anyone about it.

And Vietnam has a lot more boys born than girls, which is the third highest in Asia following China and India. As many couples prefer sons to daughters, gender-biased and prenatal sex selection is present, and 45,900 female births are missing every year in Viet Nam.

Ms, Naomi Kitahara, UNFPA Representative for Vietnam stressed that the organization of this concert demonstrated UNFPA’s commitments to achieving Zero gender-based violence and harmful practices against women and girls.

Ms. Naomi Kitahara said: “We really want to appeal to everyone to stop domestic violence against women and girls. And we also want to appeal to everyone to stop son preference and gender-biased sex selection. Let the power of music bring us all together. Let’s get united to stop those harmful practices”/.