The government plans to establish a national human rights institution to meet with the international Paris Principles standards, Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday.
The institution would promote and protect human rights and aim to prevent major violations, Chen said at the opening ceremony of the meeting for the review of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights report.
On Dec. 10, 2009, Taiwan adopted two international human rights treaties, which were the basis for establishing a human rights reporting system, and in April 2012, presented its first national human rights report.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Taiwan invited independent human rights bodies from the international community to visit Taipei in 2013 to review the report.
The review of Taiwan’s second national report in Taipei began yesterday and concludes on Friday. It is being broadcast live.
“Human rights are no longer an issue limited to closed-door discussions,” said the Ministry of Justice, which is working with the Presidential Office’s Human Rights Consultative Committee, chaired by Chen, to host the review meeting.
Chen said that three of the nine core international human rights treaties have not yet become law, including the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The other two are the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, he said.
The government will make every effort to enact the legislation, Chen said.
The Paris Principles are key evaluation criteria for national human rights institutions. They were adopted unanimously in a resolution by the UN Human Rights Commission in 1993 and in the final acts of the Human Rights Conference that same year.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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