Japan, the Czech Republic and nine of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies on Tuesday voiced their support for Taiwan’s inclusion in the World Health Assembly (WHA) after it was not invited to the annual conference for a sixth straight year.
In a prerecorded address played during the third day of the WHA in Geneva, Switzerland, Japanese Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Shigeyuki Goto said the world needed to learn from successful examples of public health responses in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, “such as Taiwan.”
“We should not make any geographical vacuums created by leaving specific regions behind in addressing global health issues such as infection control. This will serve the purpose of preventing the spread of infection worldwide,” Goto said.
Photo: CNA
Vaclav Balek, the Czech Republic’s permanent representative to the UN Office in Geneva, said in his in-person address that in the global fight against COVID-19, “no one can be left behind.”
“This is the reason why the Czech Republic fully supports Taiwan to be granted observer status to the World Health Assembly,” Balek said.
Speakers representing nine diplomatic allies — Haiti, St Kitts and Nevis, Nauru, Eswatini, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia, Palau, Tuvalu and Belize — all used parts of their respective addresses to make similar appeals.
The Taiwan issue was not brought up by speakers representing two other nations that officially recognize Taiwan.
The speaker from Honduras did not mention Taiwan in his address, while the representative from the Marshall Islands was about to raise the issue before his prerecorded address was cut off because he exceeded his time limit, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs source said.
Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Li-feng (李麗芬), who is in Geneva heading a delegation despite Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHA, told the Central News Agency that the government was still grateful to Honduras and the Marshall Islands because they joined with other allies in initiating a joint proposal to invite Taiwan to the WHA as an observer.
The WHA on Monday decided not to put that proposal on this year’s agenda, which sealed Taiwan’s exclusion from the meeting.
The WHA — the WHO’s decisionmaking body — is holding its annual gathering until Saturday and national representatives are attending in-person for the first time since the emergence of COVID-19.
Taiwan was able to send delegations to participate in the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016 under the designation “Chinese Taipei,” when relations between Beijing and Taipei were warmer during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration of then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Since 2017, Taiwan has been excluded from the WHA due to opposition from China.
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