A Year of Human Rights Covenants: Great Leap for Taiwan
National Human Rights Commission, Taiwan
linking course design and instruction, while the
Rights and Civic Education Promotion Plan” in
is less emphasized. To make things worse,
years, such as the introduction of various major
development of the awareness of human rights
a great number of instructors confuse law-
abiding education with human rights education.
Moreover, although both teachers and textbook
writers are able to include different issues in
human rights education, little has been done to
link human rights, education to the values and
principles of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) or other important literature on
international human rights, which has a negative
impact on the actual teaching. The research
team also observed that although students’ right
to expression has been advancing progressively,
their right to be heard is not respected, and
although there are groups advocating student
rights, the mechanisms for student engagement
in policy-making or campus governance are still
unfriendly.
2022). Due to changes in the situation in recent
international human rights conventions into
Taiwan and the concern about the promotion
of human rights education expressed in the
concluding observations and recommendations
in each of at least two international reviews of the
related national reports, and the establishment
of the NHRC in 2020, with overseeing the
promotion human rights education of government
departments as one of its duties, and the “National
Human Rights Action Plan” which listed human
rights education as one of the eight major human
rights issues, with the MOE being the responsible
agency, promulgated by the Executive Yuan in
2022, and the establishment of the Department
of Human Rights and Transitional Justice by the
Executive Yuan to start drafting the “National
Transitional Justice Education Action Guidelines”,
and also with the MOE being the responsible
I. Re-assessing the labor and
resource requirements related
to human rights education
To resolve the problems we currently face in
promoting human rights education at the primary
unit for transitional justice education, the MOE
is advised to re-assess the services related to
human rights education and examine if the “MOE
Human Rights and Civic Education Promotion
Plan” is sufficient to cover implantation of the
requirements suggested by the factors listed
above.
and secondary levels, we can begin with the
following three items: policy planning and
education and adjust the corresponding planning
II. E n g a g i n g p a r t i c i p a t i o n
in policy planning and
implementation and reporting
the accomplishments to the
public regularly
and implements human rights education for
Furthermore, civil society groups and student
with the “MOE Human Rights and Civic Education
policy planning and implementation of human
implementation, course planning and teacher
training, and the human rights environment on
campus. In policy planning and implementation,
the MOE is first advised to re-assess the labor
and resources requirements for human rights
for labor and funding. Currently, the MOE plans
primary and secondary education in accordance
Mid-Range Plan” (renamed the “MOE Human
groups should be invited to participate in
rights education. The MOE should design
National Human Rights Commission 2022 Annual Report
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