President Ma Ying-jeou and Vice President Vincent C. Siew attended the first meeting of the Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee on the morning of December 10. The president presented letters of appointment to the members of the committee one by one and expressed his appreciation to committee members for providing their valuable opinions.
President Ma commented that December 10 is Human Rights Day. Since the passage of the United Nations (UN) Charter in June 1945, the UN has gone on to pass the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and in 1966 approved the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Together, these three documents constitute the so-called International Bill of Human Rights, he said. Of these, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been widely recognized as international common law, and is thus binding on all nations throughout the world regardless of whether they have signed it. The president remarked that while the ROC signed the two covenants in 1967, it lost its UN representation four years later, making it impossible for the ROC's ratification to take effect.
The president noted that on December 10, 2008 he proclaimed that the ROC should complete ratification of the two covenants as soon as possible. Last year, the Legislative Yuan approved the two documents and he then signed the instruments of ratification. On April 22, 2009, an enforcement act for the two covenants was promulgated, incorporating the documents into domestic law and making them applicable in courts and administrative agencies as of December 10 of the same year when the enforcement act entered into force. Over a two-year period starting from then, government agencies are to carry out a comprehensive review of regulations to examine if any violate the principles of the two covenants, and shall amend or repeal them if necessary. Prior to the completion of this initiative, the content of the two covenants will take precedence, he explained.
President Ma said that the two covenants require each nation to establish a human rights committee. Given differences in the governmental systems, the methods for establishing such an organization will vary. After much discussion here, and out of respect for the current system, it was decided to implement the covenants by establishing a Human Rights Consultative Committee under the Office of the President. This will facilitate human rights work, he explained, adding that the primary job of the committee will be to formulate human rights policies and review the nation’s annual human rights reports. President Ma remarked that the topic of human rights is very wide in scope, so the discussions at committee meetings should focus on basic human rights. Concrete working plans should be set forth, along with priorities for work and the directions for policy, he said.
The president stated that a review of the history of human rights shows that governments are the most prone to trampling on human rights. Governments possess authority, and public servants exercise that authority. It is quite a difficult task to make public servants understand what line they should not cross in their work. President Ma remarked that two years ago in his inauguration address he stressed that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Public servants should bear this in mind as they carry out their work in order to avoid infringing on human rights, he said.
President Ma expressed his hope that all committee members will keep in mind the expectations of society and draw on the expertise of specialists from many different fields when they formulate policies and review human rights reports. This will boost the standard of Taiwan's protection of human rights and enable the nation to keep more closely in step with international practices, he remarked. The committee will be convened by Vice President Siew and the deputy convener will be Professor Sung-lin Chai.
The members of the Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee are: Vice President Siew (convener); Sung-lin Chai, Chairman, Environment and Development Foundation (deputy convener); Sean C. Chen, Vice Premier; Yeong-Chin Su, Vice President, Judicial Yuan; Chen Jinn-lih, Vice President, Control Yuan; Wang Yu-ling, Secretary General, League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled; Wang Yu-min, Chief Executive Director, Child Welfare League Foundation; Yung-Ran Li, Director, Chinese Association for Human Rights; Nigel N. T. Li, Adjunct Professor, School of Law, Soochow University; Kao The-Ii, Assistant Professor and Acting Director, National Dong Hwa University Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Ethno-Development; Hsia Hsiao-chuan, Professor and Director, Shih Hsin University Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies; Chueh Chang, Associate Professor, National Taiwan University Institute of Health Policy and Management; Hwei-Syin Chen, Professor, National Chengchi University College of Law; Huang Chun-Chie, Professor, National Chung Cheng University; Jui-ju Huang, Chairperson, TC Reading; Mab Huang, Professor, Soochow University Department of Political Science; Bruce Yuan-Hao Liao, Associate Professor, National Chengchi University College of Law; and Li-Ling Tsai, Associate Professor and Department Chair, National Kaohsiung Normal University Graduate Institute of Gender Education.