A Year of Human Rights Covenants: Great Leap for Taiwan National Human Rights Commission, Taiwan III. The NHRC, a gateway to international human rights expertise International experts are not mandate holders Beyond this cooperation with French the Taiwanese Human Rights community tap into the expertise of the wider international information to these experts (other than inter- its peers in the Asia-Pacific region. In fact, to find ways to maintain these international international community, it has been difficult issues and gradually develop a network of standards among officials and academics. recommendations in between treaty reviews. when they come to Taiwan and are usually appointed only for one review. After the review is done, there is nothing formally to maintain a link between IRC members and institutions, it will be important for the NHRC to nor any way for Taiwanese activists to send human rights movement especially among personal relationships). The NHRC could try because of Taiwan’s specific status in the experts engaged in Taiwanese human rights to mainstream international human rights experts that could be sought for advice and Since the end of martial law in 1987, Taiwanese democratization and the progressive structuring of civil society have made remarkable progress. Thanks to pioneering activists, politicians and scholars, the use of international human rights law in the Taiwanese State system, although more recent, has made important progress since the gradual integration of international human rights conventions into domestic law (guoneifahua) has started in 2009. The creation of an ad-hoc regular monitoring system inspired by the UN treaty bodies monitoring system to monitor the “nationalized” conventions has been an important achievement and allowed Taiwan to keep track of the evolution of international human rights law despite not Furthermore, there is still a need to strengthen the study, understanding and mainstreaming of international human rights law as well as the independent monitoring function of NHRIs in Taiwan, especially among officials and academics. By creating permanent channels of discussion with other NHRIs and human rights experts in the world, the NHRC should be the institution that allows human rights standards to be continuously integrated in policy debates and their enforcement discussed in public instead of being considered only when the IRCs come to review the conventions once every four to five years. being a member state of the UN. In certain Finally, through its reports, recommendations considered by IRC members as even better NHRC should spark or widen public debates aspects, this localized system has been than the UN’s mostly because it allows them to have much longer sessions to question State representatives on their implementation of the Convention and gives more space for NGO participation than the UN system. But in other aspects, its impacts are more limited. and human rights education activities, the on sometimes controversial human rights issues, such as children’s well-being under a highly stressful education system, the abolition of death penalty, refugees and migrant workers’ rights or racial and other discriminations. Beyond solving individual National Human Rights Commission 2022 Annual Report 93