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DPP members want `Taiwan' on WHO bid

President and CEO of the Taiwan New Century Foundation Chen Lung-chu, left, and executive director of the Foundation of the Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan Wu Shu-min co-chair a seminar at the legislature yesterday to discuss which name Taiwan should use in its WHO bid. PHOTO: CHU YU-PING, TAIPEI TIMES

As Taiwan steps up its efforts to join the WHO, scholars, activists and DPP lawmakers yesterday urged the government to use the name "Taiwan" in its bid.

But some challenged the idea of the nation being termed a "health entity" in its bid, as proposed by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (高英茂).

During a forum yesterday, DPP lawmakers vowed to push for the passage of a resolution in the legislature that backed the use of the name "Taiwan" for the country's bid to gain observer status at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May.

"The most serious internal difficulty with Taiwan's WHO bid lies in the lack of consensus among different political parties on which name should be used for the bid," said DPP Legislator Lai Ching-teh (賴清德), head of the Health, Environmental Protection and Social Welfare League, the largest subgroup in the legislature.

"It's necessary to push the legislature to pass a resolution supporting the use of the name `Taiwan' in the country's WHO bid," Lai said.

DPP Legislator Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳) said: "We want the resolution to sail through the legislature before May 13."

The meeting of the WHA, the highest decision-making body of the WHO, will be held in Geneva from May 14 to May 22.

"No name is better than Taiwan," said Chiang Huang-chih (姜皇池), associate professor of law at National Taiwan University, adding that the government should choose a name that will distinguish the country from China while maintaining a certain flexibility.

Scholars held disparate views on the foreign ministry's proposal to use the term "health entity" to describe Taiwan's status in its WHO bid.

"I urged the ministry not to raise the notion again ... because such a notion is absolutely lacking in adherence to WHO rules," Chiang said.

Neither the WHO Constitution nor WHA rules stipulate that a "health entity" can apply to become a WHO member or WHA observer.

Membership in the WHO, as a UN-specialized agency, is limited to sovereign states, but the organization does not specify qualifications for its observers.

Chiang said that Taiwan's accession to APEC as "an economy" and Taiwan's entry into the WTO as "a separate customs territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" does not further the nation's WHO bid as some optimists have claimed.

This is because APEC defines each member as "an economy" and related WTO rules also have stipulated that "a separate customs territory" can apply as a WTO member, Chiang said.

Even Taiwan's admission to various regional fisheries-management organizations -- in its capacity as "a fishing entity" under the name of "Chinese Taipei" -- is not applicable to the nation's WHO bid, Chiang argued.

"We were admitted to these organizations as a `fishing entity' because the related 1995 United Nations Implementing Agreement created the term `fishing entity' and thus allowed some room for flexibility for Taiwan," Chiang said.

Part of Article One of the 1995 UN document states that the agreement "applies mutatis mutandis to other fishing entities whose vessels fish on the high seas."

Hu Nien-tsu (胡念祖), professor of marine policy and law of the sea at National Sun Yat-sen University, who was involved in negotiations leading up to Taiwan's participation as a fishing entity in various regional management organizations, said changing WHO rules would be difficult.

Taiwan's admission to the WHO "as a health entity" would require the amendment of the WHO Constitution, the passage of which would require a two-thirds majority vote by WHO members, Hu said.

For the time being, however, Taiwan can stress the country's willingness and ability to seek substantive participation in health-related issues in a multilateral setting, Hu added.
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