An online petition launched by the Humanistic Education Foundation to create a national committee for investigating sexual assaults of minors has gathered more than 5,000 signatures on the National Development Council’s Public Policy Network Participation Platform.
According to the Guidelines for the Implementation of the Public Policy Network Participation Platform, relevant agencies must issue a response by the end of next month.
Foundation executive director Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭) said that the proposed policy received considerable support in such a short time — it was proposed on Tuesday last week — indicating that the public was concerned about the issue.
Photo courtesy of the Humanistic Education Foundation
The foundation’s proposal was based on the concluding remarks of a panel of judges from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Feng said.
The panel suggested that Taiwan should consider referencing general comment No. 13 of the 2011 CRC General Comments on “the right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence,” strengthen existing laws and regulations, and establish legislation toward long-term prevention and protection of children in all environments — including their home — from any kind of violence.
General comment No. 13 said that among preventive measures, the nation should focus on including the responsibility to investigate, or more specifically, “identifying risk factors for particular individuals or groups of children and caregivers (in order to trigger targeted prevention initiatives) and identifying signs of actual maltreatment (in order to trigger appropriate intervention as early as possible).”
Feng called on the government to resolve inherent systemic problems instead of invoking the excuse that abuses on minors are isolated cases and citing existing regulations.
“Any preventive measure is just a smokescreen if we do not know what we are preventing from happening,” Feng said.
The policy the foundation proposed calling on the government to launch general investigations into why repeat sexual molestation and assault was occurring in schools and child-centric organizations and offer a resolution, Feng said.
The foundation urged supporters to continue to promote the issue, despite having achieved the threshold for the policy to be considered by the government.
Sexual predation of children will not end until the public breaks its silence and forces the government to resolve the issue, the foundation said.
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