TANG PRIZE/Tang Prize winner lauds Taiwan implementation of human rights covenants

Taipei, Sept. 30 (CNA) Former Irish President Mary Robinson on Monday praised Taiwan's efforts to incorporate international covenants on human rights into its domestic law despite not being a signatory.

Taiwan has been "nuanced and clever" in tracking carefully businesses' compliance with human rights standards promulgated in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other international covenants, despite not being able to formally ratify those covenants, Robinson said at a Tang Prize Masters' Forum in Taipei.

Robinson, who received the 2024 Tang Prize in Rule of Law on Sept. 27, was responding to remarks by Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), an attorney and former lawmaker, who detailed Taiwan's long road to legalizing same-sex marriage and implementing CEDAW.

As Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, the U.N. does not recognize Taiwan's signed document for CEDAW, and as such its reports based on the covenant are not reviewed by the U.N. committee in charge of monitoring members' implementation of CEDAW, Yu said.

During her speech, Robinson also noted that Taiwan worked for 20 years to establish its National Human Rights Commission.

Around the time she started serving as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights in 1997, Robinson said, she had seen the need to "embed human rights in the culture of countries," and strongly supported emerging human rights commissions, which she saw as an "important way" of achieving that goal.

Robinson also said she saw a parallel between Taiwan's endeavors to legalize same-sex marriage and Ireland's own.

The former Irish president referenced the Norris v. Ireland case, in which she said that as an attorney she helped David Norris bring a lawsuit against the Irish government.

That subsequently led the Supreme Court of Ireland to rule that the country's criminalization of certain homosexual acts was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the right of respect for private and family life, she said.

This opened Ireland up to same-sex marriage, and in a 2015 referendum garnered a "very comprehensive yes" to the question, in which only one county opposed and was criticized, according to Robinson.

The watershed moment for Taiwan's same-sex marriage movement came in 2017 when the Council of Grand Justices issued landmark Interpretation No. 748, which ruled that a provision in the Civil Code that denied two persons of the same sex the right to form a civil union was unconstitutional.

The Constitutional interpretation came at the request of gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) in 2014.

However, in 2018 72.48 percent voted "yes" in a referendum asking whether voters agreed the Civil Code should define marriage as being between a man and a woman, essentially rejecting Interpretation No. 748.

In a statement, the Judicial Yuan said the referendum result shall not contradict the Constitution, and in 2019, the Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 was passed by the Legislative Yuan, providing a legal basis for same-sex marriage in Taiwan.

The Tang Prize, established by Ruentex Group Chairman Samuel Yin (尹衍樑) in 2012, is a set of biennial international awards to honor individuals who have made prominent contributions in four categories -- sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology, and the rule of law.