國際人權公約執行報告的審查過程及其影響

After the review then what?

For a week in January, 2017, ten experts, quite a few of them who had served or were serving in fairly high positions at the United Nations were invited to Taipei to review the Second National Report for the implementation of the two international human rights covenants. They met with both government officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations to require additional information, to clarify some of the points made in the documents submitted to them earlier in the process and to issue a report with observations and recommendations by the end of their work. This is not, however, the first exercise of the kind. In 2013, a precedent was first set and received high marks from the international community for its creativity and effectiveness. In the closing observations and recommendations, the experts reiterated many of their criticisms and policy recommendations they had made four years prior, indicating that not enough progress had been made during the four year interval. The primary concern of this brief paper is why no more has been done and what will be happening next? Will the new administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, publicly committed to the promotion of human rights do more in heeding the advice of the experts, and if so what policies and measures can be anticipated? By the end of its first two years in power, it is fairly clear that the new administration has been giving priority to certain issues, such as transitional justice, not only the February 28 Incident of 1947 and the White Terror Era of the 1950–1960s, but the historical injustice done to the indigenous people, pension system reform and reclaiming what is declared to be illegally gained property of the Chinese Nationalist Party. However, as it is not clear what the results of the policies and measures which have been adopted to deal with the issues referred to above will be, this paper can only provide a tentative assessment of the performance of the new administration. he material used for this paper includes documents and reports of the government, alternative reports from non-governmental organizations as well as scholarly studies. It is supplemented by the observations of this writer during his years serving as a member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights, and in particular as the chief advisor to the seven-personm group supervising the review process in 2013 and 2017. 本文旨在審視2013年與2017年國際學者專家應邀來台審查《公民與政治國際權利公約》與《經濟社會文化國際權利公約》的經過，他／她們提出的「結論性意見與建言」，以及政府的對應。關注所在是歷屆政府對國際學者專家的建言，採取什麼樣的政策與措施，為什麼在兩次審查報告期中少有進展？蔡英文政府可能有什麼樣的對應？本文所使用的資料可分作三部分，包括政府報告、民間人權組織的平行報告，以及學術界的討論。另外，作者親身參與這兩次報告的提出、撰寫與邀請國際學者專家來台審查，他的觀察與見聞也影響本文的書寫與分析。