The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed a preliminary review of the proposal for Taiwan to join the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The UN permits countries that are not UN members to join the treaty.
The legislature's Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs committee yesterday reviewed the bill, which was proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aims to increase Taiwan's international visibility.
The committee quickly passed the preliminary review of the bill.
If the bill passes a final review is passed, the legislature will request that President Chen Shui-bian (
The ministry will then submit an application to the UN secretary-general for approval.
According to a ministry report written by Vice Minister Yang Tzu-pao (
The bill defines what constitutes discrimination against women and sets a framework for action to end such discrimination. So far 185 countries have signed the treaty, the report said.
Yang said yesterday that in view of the ability of non-UN members to join the treaty, the ministry believes that Taiwan's participation would increase the nation's international visibility and promote women's rights.
"We will work on all possible means to make Taiwan a participate in the treaty," Yang said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (
"We hope to see that more excellent women diplomats be promoted to be ambassadors or representative abroad. We don't want men to always be in charge of our embassies or representative offices," Hsiao said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) criticized former presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) as a "typical male chauvinist" after Koo's comment that Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) was not a suitable candidate to be the nation's president because "someone wearing a skirt would not make a good commander-in-chief."
"Koo's remark was stark discrimination against women," Hsu said.
For example, Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching