Taiwan has an important role in global supply chains, and worldwide trends suggest that local businesses would be able to greatly improve their competitiveness if they stepped up efforts to protect the basic human rights of migrant workers, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Taiwan, Chairperson Chen Chu (??) said on Wednesday.
Chen made the remarks remotely during a video call for the 2022 Forum on Migrant Workers’ Human Rights in Taiwan held by the NHRC. She is visiting France to share her struggle as a political prisoner during Taiwan’s White Terror era ahead of Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.
The forum was attended by presidential advisor Michael Hsiao (???), National Chengchi University associate professor of law Lin Jia-he (???), Taiwan Labour Front Secretary-General Son Yu-liam (???), Workforce Development Agency Deputy Director-General Lin Hong-de (???), and Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Chuan-neng (???).
The protections a country provides to ensure migrant workers’ basic rights is a key indicator of that country’s overall human rights situation, which is why the NHRC attaches great importance to this area, Chen said.
For instance, the NHRC has commissioned an institute to research how migrant workers raise their children overseas and has conducted interviews as part of a survey to identify the key components of human rights protections as they relate to migrant workers, she said.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights contain a slew of articles aimed at protecting laborers’ basic rights, while the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families notes that migrant workers should receive equitable treatment.
Additionally, all the covenants adopted by the International Labor Organization contain sections on migrant workers undergirded by the principles of non-discrimination and national treatment, she said.
These provisions have been incorporated into Taiwan’s laws.
Taiwan has more than 710,000 migrant workers whose basic rights have come under international scrutiny in recent years, she said.
From the perspective of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, the benefits of the advancement of human rights for workers, as evidenced in companies worldwide, outweigh the potential cost of doing so in that they have become more competitive along the way, she said, calling on all parts of society to come together in furthering this cause.
NHRC Vice Chairperson Wang Jung-chang (???) said Chen spearheaded a survey of migrant fishermen’s basic rights in Taiwan and personally streamlined interdepartmental communications in addressing human rights issues facing migrant workers.
The NHRC held the forum in the hope of identifying solutions to continuing human rights issues in Taiwan and increasing public awareness about these issues ahead of Human Rights Day, he said.
Taiwan was named in the biennial List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) in 2020 and 2022 due to poor treatment of predominantly Indonesian and Philippine migrant fishermen engaged in deep-sea fishing, of which there were about 35,000 as of September last year.
According to the 2022 report published in September, migrant fishermen employed by Taiwanese are sometimes given inaccurate information about wages, made to pay recruitment fees and sign debt contracts, forced to work at sea for months without stopping at a port of call, and often faced hunger and dehydration.
The Control Yuan, whose members also make up the NHRC, in May 2021 censured the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Labor and the Fisheries Agency over what it called the agencies’ inaction at preventing Taiwan from being named in the report in September 2020 despite having been informed by Greenpeace that it would report Taiwan to the USDOL if poor work conditions facing migrant fishermen persisted.
In addition, the Control Yuan, the branch of Taiwan’s government responsible for investigating and disciplining public servants and agencies, published six reports from 2016 to 2021 on problems relating to the employment of migrant fishermen in Taiwan and proposed improvements.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel