There is less than one month to go before the opening of World Health Assembly’s (WHA) 73rd plenary session, which is scheduled for May 17 to 21, and whether Taiwan is to be invited is once again drawing attention worldwide.
Despite the fact that Taiwan’s great achievements in combating COVID-19 and its “Taiwan can help” campaign have been widely reported by foreign media, there are only a few nations that have publicly announced their support for Taiwan’s participation in the WHO and the WHA.
The government has in the past few years sought to attend the WHA as an observer, while fully participating in WHO affairs. Although this is a compromise it has to make due to political reality, it has made many nations support only observer status for Taiwan instead of supporting Taiwan being able to work with the international community as a full member of the WHO.
When we look back at Taiwan’s exclusion from WHO in the past few decades, it is clear that many Taiwanese lost their lives during the 1998 enterovirus and 2003 SARS outbreaks due to the lack of an early warning from the WHO.
Taiwan remains subject to a secret memorandum of understanding signed by China and the WHO in 2005, which says that only if China agrees can Taiwanese experts attend WHO meetings.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO’s inaction has exposed its “China first” stance toward global health, creating a huge disaster for the global community.
Under pressure from many nations, the WHO has now changed its stance from avoiding the Taiwan issue by emphasizing its “one China” policy, claiming that membership for Taiwan should be decided by member states.
However, the “one China” policy has never appeared in any official WHO document.
Even though WHA Resolution 25.1, which was passed in 1972 by the WHO according to a UN resolution, states that the WHA “decided to restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the World Health Organization, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the World Health Organization,” the issue of Taiwan’s representation and the phrase “one China” never appeared in a document.
WHO spokesperson Iain Simpson in April 2004 said that the “one China” policy was never a guiding principle at the WHO and the organization had always insisted that Taiwan’s membership should be decided by all of its member states.
There could not be a better time for the government to urge other nations to support a much more meaningful role for Taiwan by enabling it to become a WHO member.
As the founding spirit and mission of the WHO were established on universal principles of health, once any nation or region becomes a crack in the global health security network, then no other nation can be free from the risks and threats of a pandemic.
Article 3 of the WHO constitution stipulates that membership in the organization shall be open to all states, and non-UN members, according to Article 6, can be admitted as members when their application has been approved by a simple majority vote of the WHA.
The admission threshold of the WHA is different from that of the UN system, which is a two-thirds majority vote, and the simple majority also intends to downplay the veto power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council to minimize sovereignty controversies in global politics and emphasize that the WHO is a professional science-based organization whose responsibility is to promote global health, not resolve political conflicts.
As a role model in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s outstanding performance has proven that the nation is an independent, responsible, capable democratic nation willing to offer its help to the international community.
Sadly, Taiwan remains excluded from the WHO’s early warning system and it has also been falsely accused by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of launching racist attacks after its efforts to alert the WHO to the potential human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 were denied.
This unfair treatment has been extensively reported on by the global media.
Allowing Taiwan membership in the WHO is key to reforming the organization to ensure that not only does it meet public health needs, it can bring long-term benefit to the world.
Lin Shih-chia, a former legislator, is executive director of the Medical Professionals’ Alliance in Taiwan.
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