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.
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) earlier this month said it is necessary for her to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and it would be a “huge boost” to the party’s local election results in November, but many KMT members have expressed different opinions, indicating a struggle between different groups in the party. Since Cheng was elected as party chairwoman in October last year, she has repeatedly expressed support for increased exchanges with China, saying that it would bring peace and prosperity to Taiwan, and that a meeting with Xi in Beijing takes priority over meeting
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman for maritime affairs Rogelio Villanueva on Monday said that Manila’s claims in the South China Sea are backed by international law. Villanueva was responding to a social media post by the Chinese embassy alleging that a former Philippine ambassador in 1990 had written a letter to a German radio operator stating that the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) did not fall within Manila’s territory. “Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised,” Villanueva said. The Philippines won a landmark case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that found China’s sweeping claim of sovereignty in
RSS