Thirteen of the nation’s 15 diplomatic allies as of Thursday had appealed to the WHO to invite Taiwan to participate in its decisionmaking body as an observer.
The appeals came days before the annual World Health Assembly (WHA), which is scheduled to be held virtually from Monday next week to June 11. Taiwan has again not received an invitation.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the decision on whether Taiwan should be invited as an observer does not rest with him, but rather with the representatives of the WHO’s 194 member states.
Photo provided by Taiwan’s representative office in Switzerland
In keeping with WHO procedure, the appeals filed by Taiwan’s 13 allies would be reviewed by the organization’s general affairs department, and the WHA would decide whether the proposal should be included on its agenda, he said.
According to information released by the WHO, the 13 countries that have advocated for Taiwan’s participation in the 74th annual WHA meeting are Belize, Eswatini, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tuvalu.
As of Thursday, Taiwan’s two other diplomatic allies, Paraguay and the Vatican, had called for Taiwan’s inclusion. The Vatican, Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Europe, holds only permanent observer status in the UN and rarely speaks on political issues at the WHA.
The deadline for registration for this year’s WHA was Monday last week, and for the fifth consecutive year, Taiwan has not been invited to participate as an observer.
Taiwan, whose formal name is the Republic of China, left the UN in 1971 and the WHO in 1972. Since then, Taiwan has only participated in the WHA from 2009 to 2016 as an observer at the invitation of the WHO amid warmer cross-strait relations.
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