Taiwan has made "moderate progress" in combating human trafficking since it was put on the Special Watch List last June, according to an interim assessment released by the US State Department.
The assessment evaluates the performance of 39 countries placed on the Special Watch List in the department's 2006 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report published last June.
The department said that some countries could be downgraded further in the TIP Report this June if their anti-trafficking efforts are determined to be inadequate.
In last year's report, Taiwan was placed on the "Tier 2 Watch List" for failing to show evidence of increased efforts over the past year to address human trafficking, particularly forced labor and sexual servitude among legal Southeast Asian contract workers and brides.
According to the 2007 Interim Assessment, Taiwanese authorities failed to prosecute any offenders for trafficking for forced labor or domestic servitude, despite evidence of a significant problem among the 350,000 Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Filipino workers in Taiwan.
It said Taiwanese authorities failed to make progress in developing a system to identify and protect foreign workers subjected to conditions of forced labor or involuntary servitude.
However, it mentioned significant improvements made by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) in policies and regulations governing the terms and conditions of work for foreign laborers in Taiwan.
These include bilateral agreements reached with Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to allow foreign domestic workers to apply directly to the CLA for work instead of going through Taiwanese labor brokerage agencies known for their exploitative practices, the report said.
Meanwhile, in an effort to prevent trafficking of women through sham marriages, the Ministry of the Interior has banned the registration of new international marriage brokers based in Taiwan and strengthened regulations and monitoring of existing firms.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also tightened the screening of Southeast Asian women applying for visas as "brides" of Taiwanese men, the report said.
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