The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said that is to focus on attending the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May rather than organizing a formal proposal to participate in the WHO executive board meeting.
Due to political factors, pushing for participation in the WHO has been an extremely difficult and lengthy mission, despite the cause’s legitimacy and growing support from the international community, Department of International Organizations Director-General Bob Chen (陳龍錦) told a news conference in Taipei.
“This year, the primary goal of our campaign is to secure an invitation for Taiwan to attend the 72nd WHA as an observer,” Chen said.
Pushing for formal participation at the WHO executive board meeting would not be the best focus of government efforts, as the board only has 34 members and its meetings are mostly attended by government officials and specialists, while health ministers of 194 member states participate in the WHA, Chen said.
“The WHA carries more significance and generally attracts greater international media attention,” Chen said, adding that key members of the WHO executive board have also been reluctant to support Taiwan’s cause at their meetings, which are convened to discuss technical and professional issues rather than political matters.
Another reason for the ministry’s decision is because the board does not have a final say on issues such as Taiwan’s participation in the WHA — it can only suggest putting the nation’s cause on the WHA’s provisional agenda, Chen added.
Government agencies are in communication with like-minded nations to develop a strategy for its bid to participate in the WHA as an observer, Chen said, adding that the plan would be announced when ready.
Taiwan in 1997 began seeking an invitation to the WHA’s annual meetings and was invited as an observer in 2009 under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
Beijing in 2017 and last year blocked such invitations to show its displeasure with the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Taiwan United Nations Alliance chairman Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said that the government should ask the nation’s diplomatic allies to submit a proposal at the WHO executive board meeting urging China to publicize information about the African swine fever epidemic to its neighboring countries, including Taiwan.
Doing so would make Taiwan more qualified to attend this year’s WHA, he added.
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:
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