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Taiwan will convene the third international review meeting of ICCPR and ICESCR in 2021. Through the State Report submitted by the state and the parallel reports submitted by civil society, the international review committee will be able to have a comprehensive understanding of implementing conditions of the Covenants, and then propose concluding observations and recommendations that is crucial to the advancement of human rights in Taiwan, and to laid the direction for human rights promotion in the next four years.

The reviewing and tracking of the government’s human rights reports is a huge focus of what we do as well as a critical part of human rights groups’ advocacy work. The Covenants Watch coordinated coalitions of NGOs (68 in 2012 – 2013, and 80 in 2016 – 2017) to co-author the parallel reports on the government’s implementation of ICCPR and ICESCR. Building on prior experiences, beginning this year, we inquired with former co-authors their willingness to re-join forces for this report. Editing meetings were held in February, during which participants decided on the basic format, editing system, and the purpose of this report, which is to truthfully present in-the-field experiences and policy recommendations on various topics based on the consensus reached among co-authors, to provide the Review Committee with a clear and accurate understanding of the current human rights situation in Taiwan.

This report is a collaboration of 47 groups. In addition to human rights organizations that have long been engaged in comprehensive human rights issues, judicial reforms, the abolition of the death penalty, prison reforms, and the promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, many of those that participated in this report are stakeholders and their relevant groups that work on the front line, raising awareness, conducting rescue operations, providing counseling, etc. This report reflects the struggles faced by NGOs as well as the real-life events and cruxes they observed in the field. This report provides constructive criticism on the inadequacies of government policies and the law, and the non-compliances with international human rights covenants. In addition, during the production of this report, civil organizations had the chance to reexamine the compatibility and inconsistencies between human rights conventions and domestic laws, which could be useful in future advocacy work. For the detailed list of participating organizations, please refer Participating NGOs.

To produce this report, we formed several working groups each responsible for a particular theme or provisions of the previous concluding observations and the covenants. Each group has a leader, also known as the editor-in-charge, who convened members of the group for discussions and first drafts. The drafts were then integrated by executive editors, who would also cross-reference contents submitted by different groups and amend, if needed, to ensure coherence. In order to support organizations that did not have time to produce their own drafts, we developed a unique model to make sure their voices are presented in this report. Executive editors would conduct interviews with these groups, and along with the experiences and policy recommendations they shared, as well as information gathered through extensive research and data compilation, complete the drafts, and finalize after receiving confirmation from the groups. The majority of the policy recommendations in this report are the consensus of the respective participating groups. In a few instances where consensus was not reached, either due to a lack of time or that there were fundamental differences in terms of perspectives, executive editors would coordinate and combine their opinions. It is worth mentioning that given the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, we dedicated an entire chapter in this report to the human rights impact of government policies in response to the pandemic. The State Report failed to touch upon this topic in its report. It is hoped that the Review Committee could prioritize this in its List of Issues, and request the State to provide explanations to the social implications of its policies.

We would like to thank all participating groups for their valuable contributions, fellow executive editors, translators from home and abroad, and several friends and volunteers around the world who assisted in the translation and proofreading of this report. This report would not have been possible without support from many of CW’s individual donors, as well as financial support from the human rights museum. We hereby express our deepest gratitude.