Whether Taiwan would be invited to attend this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) depends on a power play within the WHO, despite open support from like-minded countries, Taiwanese observers have said.
The WHA, the decisionmaking body of the WHO, is to hold its 73rd session from May 17 to 21 in Geneva, Switzerland, although the meeting might be conducted virtually due to travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
US-based magazine Foreign Policy reported that Washington is seeking the support of key allies to help restore Taiwan’s observer status at the WHA and to cosign a letter asking WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan to the assembly.
Photo: AP
The WHO Secretariat has the discretion to invite any non-WHO member to the WHA without calling a meeting to vote on the matter.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) on Saturday said that the key for Taiwan’s bid to attend the WHA rests on the internal politics of the WHO, despite growing international support for the nation.
“Taiwan will have a better chance of being invited to the WHA if the US increases its maneuvering in the WHO Secretariat,” he said.
Prospect Foundation president Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said that Tedros is extremely unlikely to invite Taiwan to the WHA, after the Ethiopian microbiologist on April 8 accused the nation of organizing personal and racist attacks against him.
However, the US might want to break the unspoken rule that Taiwan’s participation requires China’s approval, he added.
Lee Che-chuan (李哲全), a senior researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said it is difficult for Taiwan to be accepted into the WHO due to “one China” policies observed by many nations, but added that there is a chance that it could be invited to the WHA.
The Republic of China was a founding member of the WHO. However, the nation was expelled in 1972, a few months after its seat at the UN was taken over by the People’s Republic of China.
Since then, Taipei has been unable to participate in the WHA, apart from the observer status it held from 2009 to 2016, when relations with Beijing were relatively warm under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS