From the Chairperson Toward A Human Rights Paradigm: Setting up the Taiwan Human Rights Commission It has been three years since the National Human Rights Commission (hereafter “the Commission” or the NHRC) was established. The concerted efforts of all our staff members made it possible to bring to you this first NHRC annual report. It also marked a new way of communication between the NHRC and society. From the call for establishment of a NHRC by the civil society organizations in 1999 through the passage of the Organic Act of the Control Yuan National Human Rights Commission on December 10, 2019 to the establishment of the NHRC on August 1, 2020, it took 20 years of hard work to succeed. In compliance with the UN’s Principles Relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions (Paris Principles), the NHRC is founded upon organizational independence, accountability, and membership diversity. It is also expected to connect with the international human rights system. Such an institution is the first of its kind among our government structure. Hence, neither the nature nor the duties of the NHRC were well-known to the public at the beginning. Nonetheless, I am honored to be working with all our staff members. While COVID-19 was posing such threat and challenges to the whole world, we managed to accomplish various difficult tasks and to build our internal system through trials and errors. First, we issued a “NHRC Special Report on Foreign Fishermen’s Human Rights Situation”, which was of great concern to the international community and to urge the administrative departments to propose a fisheries and human rights action plan; we also were engaged in the process concerning the implementation of five international human rights covenants; then came the presentation to the constitutional court as an expert witness; lastly we embarked on a number of research projects, systemic inquiries and investigations, and research on sexual assaults in children and adolescent’s placement institutions and campus, problems facing migrant workers in child-rearing, as well as the national preventive mechanism (NPM) pilot project. In the field of human rights education, we promoted measures in collaboration with schools and government agencies according to the UN’s World Programme for Human Rights Education. 06 National Human Rights Commission 2022 Annual Report