Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation (Introduction—An Overview)

Abstract

In January 2017, one of the editors of this book, Jerome A. Cohen, delivered a public speech at National Taiwan University College of Law after he had served as a member of the international group of experts invited by the government of Taiwan to review its implementation of international human rights covenants. In his speech, he mentioned that based on his personal experience and his participation in the review, Taiwan has much to share with people in other parts of the world about its experiences in transforming itself from historically having had an authoritarian legal and political structure into what is now a vibrantly democratic society.

Spurred by this, we decided to put together a book to tell the story of Taiwan’s performance in various fields of human rights from various perspectives. We are pleased that local and international scholars and other experts, many with a long history of writing about human rights, readily accepted our invitation to participate in this volume. They were enthusiastic about the opportunity to elaborate from a theoretical and/or practical vantage point areas of human rights protection with which they are familiar. In addition to the introductory chapter coauthored by the editors of this book, we have collected 37 chapters from authors representing a broad range of perspectives and topics, with some authors finding many developments to laud, while others instead emphasize the need for improvement.

Readers will find that there have been events, governmental decisions, and judicial decisions positively or adversely affecting human rights protection. Different views exist as to the proper way of achieving higher standards of pro- tection. But one thing that is shared by all of the authors is that human rights treaties have played a key role in the case of Taiwan. There is a broad consensus among the authors in this volume that in the case of Taiwan, these treaties have contributed importantly to facilitating the transition from an authoritarian regime to a real democracy, even as Taiwan remains outside the “jurisdiction” of these treaties. We hope that this book will provide a useful example for the discourse of human rights protection in developing countries, for the discussion of practical and legal issues raised by human rights treaties, and for demonstrating how such treaties can help States Parties as well as nonparties to promote human rights.

Keywords: Taiwan, international human rights