Activists hoping to realize President Chen Shui-bian's (
Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), head of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Peter Huang, (黃文雄), a human-rights activist and advisor to the president, and ambassador-at-large Kenneth Chiu (邱晃泉) visited the TSU legislative caucus yesterday to drum up support for legislation to create the commission.
Besides being able to launch investigations and release annual reports on human-rights issues, the commission would also be responsible for adding human rights elements to schools' curricula and pushing for Taiwan's participation in international human-rights associations.
It would also be charged with suggesting amendments to laws to better protect the rights of citizens.
The formation of the national commission was one of three human-rights policies contained in Chen's inauguration speech, which he gave on May 20, 2000.
He also said that his government would work toward encoding international human-rights standards in domestic law and would increase exchanges with international human-rights organizations.
In additions to campaigning for the establishment of the commission, Lin urged the government to ratify two international human-rights covenants: the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural rights.
He said Taiwan had signed up to the covenants in 1967, but the ratification procedure has never been completed.
The covenants were not ratified because the legislature at the time was reluctant to draw attention to the fact that Taiwanese government did not operate according to international standards, knowing the ratification would mean that the government would have to abide by the international human-rights regulations.
Lin said that times had changed and he hoped Chen would try harder to ratify the covenants.
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