The celebrations of International Women's Day last month and Children's Day on April 4 threw a spotlight on women's and children's issues and drew promises of action from the government. But the draft of the organic law of the Executive Yuan -- which was sent to the Legislative Yuan last year -- is drawing fire from women's and children's rights advocates because it would downsize and merge government offices dealing with such issues.
Advocacy organizations said the draft is a setback for the promotion of the rights of women and children. It will oversimplify the complicated issues affecting children, teenagers and women, they say, by establishing one institution and reducing staff to handle the concerns of groups with widely different issues and needs.
Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛), president of the Modern Women's Foundation, criticized the draft law's plan to downsize the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Committee of the Ministry of the Interior. Under the plan, the committee will be placed under a broad proposed bureau of women and social development.
"Domestic violence prevention relies on close cooperation from related government units including judicial, educational and health care agencies," Pan said. "The Ministry of the Interior should raise the administrative level of the committee and invest more resources to efficiently handle such cases."
Chiang Yue-chin (蔣月琴), secretary-general of the National Union of Taiwan Women Association, criticized the government for failing to make good on its promise to improve the protection of women's and children's rights.
"Preventive and remediable efforts of domestic violence, sexual abuse and harassment require a great deal of human and financial resources," Chiang said. "We are seeing more and more cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse, while at the same time the government plans to downgrade the administrative level of related units and marginalize such issues."
Chiang made the comments at a meeting earlier this week at which female legislators from all parties pushed for the establishment of a gender equality committee in the government.
According to the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Committee, 49,362 cases of domestic violence were reported last year, and the caseload has risen an average of 15 percent each year since 2002. On average, there are 3,744 cases of domestic violence per month.
A total of 3,118 cases of sexual abuse were reported in 2003, which translates to a 14.8 percent increase from last year, the statistics showed.
The Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Committee currently has 15 members. The draft law proposes to cut that number to eight.
The draft also disappointed children and teen rights advocates for its failure to provide more resources for protecting children and fostering youth development.
"The government needs to focus on youth development, rather than portraying them as troublemakers and linking policy for teenagers with children's issues," Chi Hui-jung (
The draft bill calls for merging the National Youth Commission and the Children's Bureau under the Ministry of the Interior into the department of social affairs and family services under a to-be formed ministry of health and social security.
According to the draft, the new department is designed to address issues including family policies, children and youth welfare services, protection measures and health care.
Chi suggested that the government should specify separate institutions for the development of children and teenagers, in order to take care of the different needs of these two groups.
The Taiwan Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, an anti-violence alliance, said that the passage of the Sexual Abuse Prevention Act (
Enforcing the laws, however, requires collaboration between governments at all levels and civic organizations. The government should establish a specific unit to assist in monitoring and preventing sexual abuse and sexual harrassment, the alliance suggested.
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