The draft of the organic law of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) should include specific institutions for the development of children and young people, in order to take care of the different needs of these two groups, youth-rights advocates said yesterday.
"The government needs to focus on the development of the youth, rather than directing youth policy toward prevention," said Chi Hui-jung (
To push the government to invest more in the youth, the association invited children, youth-rights groups and legislators to discuss possible solutions for what the association called fragmented and marginalized welfare plans for young people on the eve of Youth Day, today, which used to be a national holiday.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
At yesterday's press conference, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Ming-hsien (李明憲) said that youth rights would be ignored if the draft law is passed.
"Under the draft, the National Youth Commission and Children's Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior [MOI] will be merged. "It will be difficult to cover youth-rights issues with such a big institution, which has to deal with other issues at the same time," Lee said.
The draft bill calls for merging the commission and the bureau into the department of social affairs and family services under a to be formed ministry of health and social security.
According to the draft, the new department is designed to address issues including family policies, children and youth welfare services and protection measures and healthcare services.
DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (
"While children need more protection and care from their families, we should also focus more on youth development, such as career development for young adults or the protection of youth work rights," Cheng said.
Student representatives from several universities also criticized the linking of youth policies with family issues.
"Youth issues are totally different from and should be independent of family policies. What this group [youth] needs is more money for their development, rather than being treated as some kind of problem their families and society need to resolve," said Wu Cheng-che (
As the convener for the APEC Youth Camp held by the National Youth Committee last year, Wu has participated in many activities or volunteer services aimed at providing young people with opportunities to contribute to society.
"Although we don't have voting rights, we are the future of this country and are always willing to do something for society," the student said.
"I am disappointed with the government for failing to invest in the development of young people," he said.
"The government says that benefits trickle down to the youth eventually through allocations to institutions such as the Ministry of Education," the association's deputy secretary-general, Kao Cheng-yen (
"But we need to focus on the youth directly. If we do not invest in our youth now, there will be a greater social cost to pay later on," Kao said.
The draft law is still awaiting review and passage by the Legislative Yuan.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS