The UN Sustainable Development Goals Advisory Council of Parliament was yesterday established under the Legislative Yuan, with lawmakers vowing to push the government toward achieving the goals.
The council selected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) as chairwoman, and DPP legislators Karen Yu (余宛如) and Kolas Yotaka and New Power Party Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal as vice chairwomen.
The council is devoted to urging and supervising the government toward formulating policies to achieve the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and to improve interactions between the government and non-governmental organizations in Taiwan and abroad, Lin said.
There is already an Association for Sustainable Development in the Legislative Yuan, which primarily focuses on environmental issues, but the council is to focus on broader issues, such as women’s rights, education and social welfare, Lin said.
Taiwan has encountered difficulties in participating in international bodies due to political constraints, but that should not deter the nation from taking up the responsibility of reaching the goals, Lin said.
“The discussion of Taiwan’s international participation has mainly focused on its isolation, but we should take more responsibilities, especially the goal of global partnership,” she said.
“Parliament-to-parliament exchanges with other nations can prevent Taiwan from becoming the missing piece in international relations and UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” she said.
Taiwan can exercise its soft power internationally and make a reputation among leading nations by working on the sustainable development issues, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Chih-Chung Wu (吳志中) said.
Environmental Protection Administration Deputy Minister Thomas Shun-Kuei Chan (詹順貴) said that his agency, compared with other government bodies, has more opportunities in breaking the diplomatic deadlock, and sustainable development issues can be a starting point for improved diplomatic relations.
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