Monday last week was the UN’s annual World Refugee Day. According to data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there are currently 36 million refugees worldwide. Taiwan still lacks refugee legislation. The Chinese Association for Human Rights is calling on the government to pass the draft refugee law currently before the legislature, thereby realizing the ideals of a state built on human rights.
Since 1980, the association’s Taipei Overseas Peace Service (TOPS) has served in areas such as Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Cambodia and the border area between Thailand and Myanmar, working to provide education, medical care and food, and so far helping more than 1 million people.
Take the TOPS team in Thailand for example: Despite limited private resources, it has helped improve teacher training, provided children with stationery and nutritious lunches and improved the general environment in refugee camps. Such teams are a physical representation of the humanitarian spirit of Taiwanese and their professional attitude is recognized and greatly valued by local governments and international organizations alike.
According to Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Although Taiwan is neither a UN member state nor a signatory of the related international conventions, as a member of the international community it should not exclude itself from the refugee issue. It is therefore urgent that the government draft legislation to regulate standards for reviewing and recognizing refugees, as well as the provision of such basic rights such as legal advice, medical care, placement, shelter and other aid and assistance during their stay in Taiwan.
As a result of the lack of regulations, the authorities have sometimes found themselves unable to do anything when human rights activists apply for refugee status other than detain them or return them to their countries of origin. There are still Chinese dissidents in Taiwan who are legally homeless.
The Cabinet’s draft refugee law originally adopted a relatively narrow definition of the term, based on the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, restricting the right to apply for refugee status to those who are “being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
However, over the past few decades the international community has started to define refugee status differently. In this broader definition, “refugee” refers to those forced to leave their countries of birth or residence and seek asylum in other countries for reasons of political persecution, war or natural disaster.
This is the reason the association suggested the government should also include those whose freedom and lives are threatened by war or natural disasters as refugees in the draft, both at a 2009 seminar which called for the drafting of a refugee law and when participating in a meeting to revise the draft at the Ministry of the Interior earlier the same year.
The association’s suggestion was later incorporated into the new version of the draft. Unfortunately, that draft remains stuck in the legislature.
On World Refugee Day, the association called on the government to view and seek to resolve the refugee issue with an open mind. It should seek passage of the draft bill as soon as possible to realize the ideal of a state built on human rights and fulfill its international obligation to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that it ratified into domestic law in 2009.
Su Yiu-chen is chairman of the Chinese Association for Human Rights.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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