Whether Taiwan would be invited to attend this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) depends on a power play within the WHO, despite open support from like-minded countries, Taiwanese observers have said.
The WHA, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, is to hold its 73rd session from May 17 to 21 in Geneva, Switzerland, although the meeting might be conducted virtually due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
US-based magazine Foreign Policy reported that Washington is seeking the support of key allies to help restore Taiwan’s observer status at the WHA and to cosign a letter asking WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan to the assembly.
Photo: AP
The WHO Secretariat has the discretion to invite any non-WHO member to the WHA without calling a meeting to vote on the matter.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) on Saturday said that the key for Taiwan’s bid to attend the WHA rests on the internal politics of the WHO, despite growing international support for the nation.
“Taiwan will have a better chance of being invited to the WHA if the US increases its maneuvering in the WHO Secretariat,” he said.
Prospect Foundation president Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said that Tedros is extremely unlikely to invite Taiwan to the WHA, after the Ethiopian microbiologist on April 8 accused the nation of organizing personal and racist attacks against him.
However, the US might want to break the unspoken rule that Taiwan’s participation requires China’s approval, he added.
Lee Che-chuan (李哲全), a senior researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said it is difficult for Taiwan to be accepted into the WHO due to “one China” policies observed by many nations, but added that there is a chance that it could be invited to the WHA.
The Republic of China was a founding member of the WHO. However, the nation was expelled in 1972, a few months after its seat at the UN was taken over by the People’s Republic of China.
Since then, Taipei has been unable to participate in the WHA, apart from the observer status it held from 2009 to 2016, when relations with Beijing were relatively warm under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
BACK TO WINTER: A strong continental cold air mass would move south on Tuesday next week, bringing colder temperatures to northern and central Taiwan A tropical depression east of the Philippines could soon be upgraded to be the first tropical storm of this year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, adding that the next cold air mass is forecast to arrive on Monday next week. CWA forecaster Cheng Jie-ren (鄭傑仁) said the first tropical depression of this year is over waters east of the Philippines, about 1,867km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Nokaen by early today. The system is moving slowly from northwest to north, and is expected to remain east of the Philippines with little chance of affecting Taiwan,
RSS