A Mission That Doesn’t Alter

From 1999 to 2006, from an Alliance for the Promotion of a NHRC to nothing, Taiwanese people and civil society witnessed the fail of one promising party which vowed to set up a National Human Rights Commission(NHRC). The Democratic Progressive Party turned out to be feeble when faced with criticism and self-contradictory when asked to follow the Paris Principles. The first party alteration didn’t seem to move human rights work as much forward as everyone expected. And the 2008 newly elected party, Chinese National Party (KMT), doesn’t seem to realize that human rights standards don’t change with the transition of political powers. A dream of having an independent NHRC fully in accordance with the Paris Principles is drifting away.

Recognizing the importance of setting up a NHRC, TAHR restarted the campaign in early 2008. All over again, after 7 internal meetings, we reexamined the NGO Bill and made partial changes on, for example, the number of commissioners, election process and other details with the reference of other countries’ NHRC bill and local situation. We plan to reorganize a new alliance composed of the members of the old alliance and new ones, proposing the new bill and lobbying. Internationally, Forum Asia promised to help its members like Japan and Taiwan to set up their NHRCs. Along with the East Asia Human Rights Forum which is going to be held in Taiwan, ANNI members would also come to Taiwan and likely to form a lobby group and have meetings with NGOs in Taiwan to address the importance of this issue.

Politically, there are controversies whether Taiwan is a country or not for setting up a “national” human rights institution. But the fact is that we have more than 23 million people here living and working hard as anyone else in the world. For the promotion and protection of human rights, there is no doubt that we need a national human rights commission. This is a mission that doesn’t alter.



*If you want to know more about other Asian countries' NHRC/NI, please check out the Asian NI Watch E-newsletter.