Taiwan failed in a legal bid to require the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to revise its reference to the country as “Taiwan, Province of China” after the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland on Thursday refused to entertain the lawsuit filed by Taipei in July 2007, an official said.
“Although we have exhausted all available judicial procedures in this case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will continue its efforts to have the international community refer to Taiwan by its official title rather than the designation used by the ISO,” Department of Treaty and Legal Affairs director-general Yang Kuo-tung (楊國棟) said.
Yang said the rationale behind the court decision — made in a three-to-two vote — that a civil tribunal had no authority over a case with political implications — was “unacceptable.”
“The case was civil in nature, without any political implications attached. That the ISO inappropriately changed our name was an infringement on our rights and we demanded it make a correction. The court should not have dealt with the case based on political considerations,” Yang said.
The Geneva-based ISO, an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations, has used the designation for Taiwan since 1998 when it published the ISO 3166 country codes list.
Taiwan, in the name of the government, filed the lawsuit with the Geneva First Instance Court on July 20, 2007, against the ISO, requesting it change the country’s name to “Republic of China (Taiwan)” after the ISO failed to respond positively to repeated requests over the naming issue.
The ISO argued that the designation it used for Taiwan was in line with UN practices.
It was the first time Taiwan resorted to legal action over the issue of the country’s designation in a major international organization.
The ISO, which did not acknowledge Taiwan’s legal standing in bringing the lawsuit, won an appeal in March last year, when a state court overrode a verdict by the Geneva First Instance Court that favored Taiwan over the ISO regarding its legal eligibility to be a plaintiff, Yang said.
Dissatisfied with the second instance verdict, the government appealed to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland in May last year, requesting that the court ensure that Taiwan was legally eligible to file the lawsuit.
The court of second instance ruled in favor of the ISO, saying that granting rights to institute legal proceedings to Taiwan was tantamount to diplomatic recognition, which was not in line with the Swiss government’s policy, Yang said.
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