A national Human Rights Committee and the legal amendments needed for it to operate were yesterday approved by the Control Yuan.
They are to be reviewed by the Legislative Yuan.
Control Yuan Secretary-General Fu Meng-jung (傅孟融) said that the committee would have three main goals — research and planning, including drafting suggestions, pushing for legislation of important international accords on human rights and the drafting of important human rights reports; interviews and investigations of actions that violate or discriminate against the human rights of others; and educational interaction with other human rights organizations or nations.
Photo: Taipei Times
The Control Yuan on May 13 concluded its deliberations and approved a national human rights committee organic act alongside ancillary measures, an amendment to the Organic Act of the Control Yuan (監察院組織法) and an amendment to the organic acts for the Control Yuan’s subordinate committees.
All three were voted on and approved by the Control Yuan yesterday, Fu said.
The committee would have between 32 and 45 staff, with the Control Yuan president and vice president serving as committee chairman and deputy chairman, while other Control Yuan members would also serve as members of the committee, he said.
Citing figures from an assessment of international human rights institutions conducted by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, Fu said that 80 nations have institutions in the form of a human rights committee and another 48 have the institution in the form of an ombudsman.
As the nation’s highest ombudsman, the Control Yuan has since 1994 been a member of the Austria-based International Ombudsman Institute, he added.
Three human rights experts visited Taiwan in 2017, including former New Zealand human rights commissioner Rosslyn Noonan, and suggested that Taiwan should establish a human rights committee as part of the Control Yuan.
The experts also suggested that legal amendments could, while preserving the form of the Control Yuan, introduce legal responsibilities for it to oversee human rights protection so that Taiwan would become a nation in compliance with the Paris Principles.
The Paris Principles, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1993, are related to national institutions that protect and promote human rights.
The establishment of a human rights committee would help the Control Yuan become a governmental institution that promotes human rights, Fu said, adding that this would help Taiwan connect internationally on human rights development.
Should the act and amendments be passed by the Legislative Yuan, the committee would promote Taiwan’s image as a nation that safeguards human rights, Fu said.
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