See beautiful photos of ethnic minority children in Vietnam

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With 54 officially recognized ethnic groups, the Kinh account for 86 percent of the country’s population of 96 million. 75 percent of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities live mostly in the northern mountainous and Central Highlands regions.

A World Bank report said one in three ethnic minority children are affected by stunting, more than twice as much as the Kinh ethnic group, and 21 percent of ethnic minority children are underweight, 2.5 times higher than that of their Kinh peers.

Thanks to the effort from government, the number of out-of-school children aged from five to 14 has fallen significantly, particularly among five-year-old pre-primary children.

Somewhere in Vietnam, children of ethnic minorities works and risk their lives to pay for food and education.

According to a report by UNICEF in 2016, more than 230,000 children under five years old in Vietnam suffer from severe acute malnutrition every year, which is a major cause of stunting and death in children under five.

In 2016 ethnic minority groups had incomes and expenditures of only half that of the majority groups Kinh and Hoa (of Chinese origins); 44 percent of the ethnic minorities did not have a degree, twice as high as the Kinh and Hoa.