President Ma Ying-jeou on the morning of December 10 attended the ceremony to bestow the 2008 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award. The president, on behalf of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the organizer of the award, presented this year's award to Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. President Ma, on behalf of the government and people of the ROC (Taiwan), congratulated Dr. Samar on winning the award and expressed his appreciation to her for personally coming to Taiwan to accept the honor.
In remarks to the gathering, President Ma commented that today is Human Rights Day. He said that 60 years ago today, the United Nations (UN) passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The president said that from an international legal standpoint, the declaration is international customary law. As a result, all nations are bound by the declaration regardless of whether they are signatories. Subsequently, the UN continued to pass measures in this respect. In 1966 it passed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which transformed important parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into concrete treaties. He said that while the Republic of China is a signatory to the declaration, the two covenants have yet to be passed by the Legislative Yuan during the past 40 years. In order to highlight that the ROC emphasizes human rights, the president said that he contacted Premier Liu Chao-shiuan earlier in the morning and expressed his hope that the Executive Yuan at its weekly meeting on December 11 would ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to re-submit the case to the meeting that the ROC is a signatory to both covenants and it hopes the legislature will ratify them. After passing the legislature, the covenants would then be forwarded to the president for approval. The nation would then, based on international practice, forward the documents to an international organization for safekeeping. Passing these covenants would demonstrate that international human rights norms have been realized in Taiwan, he said.
President Ma noted that the fundamental spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the recognition of human dignity of all people and that this is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The president said that he is confident that a society that upholds human rights and democracy will surely be able to more effectively address the many challenges facing mankind in the 21st century than an autocratic, authoritarian one.
President Ma said Dr. Samar's decision to come to Taiwan to accept the award is an approval for the reforms that the nation has taken. He said he hopes that Dr. Samar will share with Taiwan her many years of efforts and results achieved with regards to human rights in Afghanistan. The president said adherence to democracy and human rights is a difficult road to travel. While many nations hold elections, this does not necessarily mean they are democratic countries. Many of these countries have not achieved the standard of being labeled a liberal democracy. This is something that we must be vigilant of, he said. As a result, those involved in the political system must be watchful of signs of an illiberal democracy developing in the process of promoting a democratic and constitutional government, he said.