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Taiwan, WHA need each other: President Tsai

ROC Central News Agency

05/22/2022 01:02 PM

Taipei, May 22 (CNA) Both Taiwan and the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), need each other in the face of COVID-19 challenges, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on Sunday, in response to yet another year of Taipei being left out of the WHA.

In a video speech for overseas Taiwanese traveling to Geneva to support Taiwan's inclusion in the WHA, which will commence between May 22-28, Tsai said Taiwan has made contributions to the world's public health and medical areas and should not be excluded from the occasion.

"Taiwan needs the WHA, and the WHA also needs Taiwan," she said.

Tsai stressed that the integrity of global COVID-19 control should not be broken because of intervention from a single country, adding that more than 40 countries -- including the United States and Japan -- have voiced support for Taiwan's WHA bid in a diverse manner.

Such support from the international community should be taken seriously, and Taiwan's advanced medical ability can contribute to the health of people around the world, particularly against the backdrop of critical development of the pandemic, Tsai said.

The Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan's official name), was expelled from the WHO in 1972 after losing its seat in the United Nations one year earlier.

It was able to send delegations to participate in the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016 under the designation "Chinese Taipei" when relations between Beijing and Taipei were good during Taiwan's then Kuomintang administration.

Since 2017, Taiwan has been excluded from the WHA due to opposition from China, which has taken a hard line against President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her Democratic Progressive Party for their stance that Taiwan is an independent state and their refusal to accept a compromise agreement that the previous administration had accepted and defined as the two sides being part of one China, but each is free to define what that China is -- presumably the People's Republic of China or the ROC.

(By Yeh Su-ping and Lee Hsin-Yin)

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