The government on Monday announced that it has suspended a US$1 million donation to the WHO planned to help combat Ebola. Observers might be concerned that the government has let politics get in the way of world health, but Taiwan is already among the top contributors to humanitarian aid and is working in 55 underdeveloped countries.
Donations to the WHO have always been part of the government’s efforts to join the organization. However, the UN and its affiliated organizations will never bestow that legitimacy upon Taiwan, because most of its member countries place the economic interests of a relationship with China above the interests of Taiwan. Therefore, it is wasteful and unfair for Taiwanese tax money to be given to UN organizations, especially when it could be used in the nation’s own humanitarian efforts.
The WHO constitution states: “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.” Therefore, the WHO’s discrimination against Taiwan and its fawning on human rights-violating China is not only immoral and inhumane, it is also a violation of the organization’s own values.
The WHO rejected Taiwan’s bid to join the annual World Health Assembly as an observer this year for the second year in a row, despite support for its attendance by 25 nations, US politicians and international humanitarian aid workers. In April, US senators James Inhofe and Robert Menendez, cochairs of the US Senate Taiwan Caucus, introduced legislation specifically aimed at the cause, which was cosponsored by US senators John Cornyn and Marco Rubio.
Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser on Asian affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, at the time said: “There’s no reason, in my view, to exclude Taiwan from anything that’s related to the WHO.”
Alexander Swan, a physician from Myanmar who has practiced medicine for three decades, said that politics should have no place in ensuring access to good healthcare. If “we exclude one country all the time, we lose an opportunity to help each other,” Swan said, adding that he often looks to Taiwan for inspiration in his own work.
A May 10, 2016, article published on the Brookings Institution’s Web site said that Taiwan had contributed “at least US$1.7 billion of capital subscriptions as a member of the Asian Development Bank and US$110 million to special projects since 1966, including water treatment and infrastructure projects that impact public health.”
Meanwhile, China in August reintroduced African swine fever to East Asia after it had been eliminated from the region for 97 years. That happened after Beijing switched from importing US pork to Russian, which was known to carry the virus.
China then failed to stop the disease from spreading and allowed it to enter the food chain by processing contaminated pigs rather than culling them, and it still under-reports the spread of the epidemic, National Taiwan University professor of veterinary studies Lai Shiow-suey (賴秀穗) said on Monday.
The WHO has perhaps made great contributions to world health, food safety and curbing the spread of diseases since its founding in 1948, but the organization now risks its reputation by undermining the interests of a democratic state and Taiwanese for the benefit of a known human rights violator.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
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