Taiwan – Policy coherence

III. The state duty to protect human rights

B. Actions taken

• Promotion of consistency in human rights policies (pages 5-6)

‘To signal the importance of human rights policies, the Taiwan government on 24 October 2000 established the Presidential Human Rights Advisory Committee, which on 30 April 2004 was expanded and renamed the Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee. This Committee is chaired by the Vice President, and puts especially high priority on the issues of “incorporating human rights protections into the Constitution” and “amending legislation to address human rights concerns.”

Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the “Organic Act of the Control Yuan National Human Rights Commission” in 2019. Then the National Human Rights Commission was formally established on 1 August 2020 to serve as the government’s single human rights authority. The Commission monitors whether the legislative, executive, and judicial branches operate in compliance with international human rights requirements, and whether any government policies or actions infringe upon human rights. It is also authorized to provide suggestions to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches for their reference. The aforementioned Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee has been dissolved because it completed its assigned mission.

‘To ensure consistency in the human rights policies of different government agencies, the Executive Yuan has established a Human Rights Protection and Promotion Committee to research different countries’ human rights safeguard systems, as well as international rules, and to promote and implement Taiwan’s policies for the protection of fundamental human rights. The Committee membership is composed of officials from government agencies involved in related fields, including the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Health and Welfare, Environmental Protection Administration, and Council of Indigenous Peoples.’

This information is also covered under Appendix 4: Overview of the implementation of the state duty to protect and the access to remedy, The state duty to protect, UNGP8, Actions taken (pages 47-48).

 C. Actions planned

• Administrative measures for outbound investment (page 10)

‘The Taiwan government will continue, on the basis of UNGPs, to initiate discussions regarding the issue of administrative measures for outbound investment as applied to business and human rights, and will also set up an inter-ministerial coordination mechanism at the central government level to study actions taken by other nations, and to discuss the necessity and feasibility of enacting legislation that has binding force overseas in specified fields such as anti-discrimination, labor rights, and environmental preservation in a company’s overseas investment activities.’

This information is also covered under Appendix 4: Overview of the implementation of the state duty to protect and the access to remedy, The state duty to protect, UNGP7, Actions planned (page 46).