Taiwan Today

Advocacy groups are making great strides in influencing government policymaking and helping protect citizens’ rights.

In the mid-1980s, after years of rapid economic development, a number of industrial pollution cases captured widespread public attention in Taiwan. Many of these were connected with the government’s Ten Major Development Projects, which got underway a decade before and included construction of a nuclear power plant and large-scale promotion of the petrochemical industry.

Amid this collective environmental awakening, Shih Shin-min (施信民), then professor of chemical engineering at National Taiwan University in Taipei City, together with other academics and local activists, established the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) in November 1987. That year also marked the end to decades of martial law and subsequent creation of conditions allowing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to play a crucial role in the development of a more liberal society.

Getting Heard

This was a time in which NGOs began making their voices heard, said Shih, the founding chairman of Taipei-based TEPU. They called for the establishment of proper management systems and formulation of sensible policies, he added, referring to the union’s ongoing efforts to inflect relevant laws with a sense of social justice. Some of TEPU’s successes in this regard include the Environmental Impact Assessment Act of 1994 and Basic Environment Act of 2002. Under the latter, the government is obligated to transform Taiwan into a nuclear-free country, which is also a core goal of the union.

According to Shih, TEPU was formed around the same time the Environmental Protection Administration was upgraded to a Cabinet-level organization, and less than two years after the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union caused a groundswell of anti-nuclear sentiment worldwide. “We’ve consistently told the government and the people that in addition to safety concerns, nuclear energy is more expensive to generate than other forms of power, especially when considering the complicated issue of its waste disposal and management,” he said.

From 1994 to 1998, as a result of the urging of TEPU and other advocacy groups, four referendums on the construction of Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District of New Taipei City were held by the governments of New Taipei, Taipei and northeastern Taiwan’s Yilan County. Although the majority of voters opposed the facility, work proceeded on the country’s fourth nuclear power plant until 2014 when public criticism reached a crescendo. In July 2015, state-run operator Taiwan Power Co. announced the mothballing of Lungmen for three years.

Shih, who is a member of the Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Council and a national policy adviser to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), said the decision illustrates the effectiveness of decades of local anti-nuclear activism, as well as the serious psychological impact on society of the March 2011 incident at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan.

Greater Participation

Also an NGO representative on Taipei City Government’s Public Participation Commission, Shih believes the body led by Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is fulfilling its mission of making sure residents of the metropolis can have a bigger say in the running of the local administration. “Civic voices are increasingly factored into government policymaking,” he said.

This positive trend is another feather in the cap of TEPU, which boasts nine branch offices nationwide and celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Some of the particularly pleasing highlights of the past three decades, Shih said, include last January’s amendments to the Electricity Act requiring Taiwan’s three operational nuclear power plants to be taken offline by 2025—a measure contained in a TEPU proposal.

But the union is not having its own way with lawmakers on all related issues. A suggestion to fully liberalize the energy market was rejected out of hand, leaving Taiwan Power Co. with a deeply entrenched monopoly. Shih sees the dismantling of this control as key to enhancing renewable energy development in Taiwan, and identifies such an outcome as a primary focus of TEPU and many other of its environmental group cohorts.

Socially Minded

While the anti-nuclear stance is a rallying point for many NGOs in Taiwan, it is not the only pressing social issue garnering greater attention among participants in the third sector—a term used to describe organizations belonging neither to the public nor private sectors concerned with achieving social goals. According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, those groups seeking to advance the rights and benefits of children and youth, the disabled and elderly, low-income households and women account for around 25 percent of local civil associations.

One example is Taipei-headquartered Taiwan Social Welfare League (TSWL). Established in 2007, it comprises 45 NGOs devoted to tackling national-level welfare issues like social housing and pensions that demand a strength-in-numbers approach. TSWL Secretary-General Sun I-hsin (孫一信) said the league promotes research into such issues, devises welfare-related policies and regulations, and serves as a platform for exchanges and interactions among the membership.

Sun, who doubles as deputy secretary-general of the league-affiliated Parents’ Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, Taiwan (PAPID), said after three decades of post-martial law development, NGOs have grown to be a steady, substantial force in Taiwan’s democratic society. The persistence of these groups in making or revising laws has seen Taiwan rapidly bring its welfare regulations in line with advanced international standards, he added.

Although Taiwan is not a member of the U.N., nor a signatory to the world body’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the act to implement the convention was adopted Aug. 1, 2014, by the Legislative Yuan and took effect Dec. 3 the same year. Accordingly, a committee has been set up to supervise efforts by government agencies to draft and implement administrative measures conforming to the U.N. convention.

Staffed by the Social and Family Affairs Administration under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the committee is made up of government officials, academics and representatives of NGOs, including league members such as PAPID and the League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled, both based in Taipei.

According to Sun, despite considerable results in moving forward welfare affairs, much remains to be done. One of the top priorities for TSWL is formulating a law setting out a special business relationship between the third and public sectors going beyond what is stipulated in the Government Procurement Act. In this way, NGOs contracted to the government can satisfactorily provide a stable supply of quality welfare services, he said.

In a rapidly aging society like Taiwan, Sun added, welfare services must be offered in a flexible and well-planned way, efficiently utilizing budgetary and personnel resources so as to build a seamless social security net. The league and four nonaffiliated NGOs are represented on the Cabinet’s Social Welfare Promotion Committee, which is led by Premier Lin Chuan (林全) and consists of 10 ministers and seven scholars. Sun hopes the committee, formed in 2001 to help integrate welfare policies across various government bodies, can extend its mandate to play a role in marshaling the resources of the public and private sectors.

Weighty Issue

Another NGO undertaking a weighty social issue is Taipei-headquartered Li Kang-khioh Taiwanese Culture and Education Foundation (LTCF). Established in 1996, the foundation seeks to revive the once-suppressed languages of Hakka and Holo, often called Taiwanese and spoken by Taiwan’s largest ethnic group, as well as aboriginal dialects and the cultures behind them.

LTCF Chief Executive Officer Tan Hong-hui (陳豐惠) is working to drum up greater institutional support for her group’s mission. She urges the establishment of a Cabinet-level organization responsible for Holo affairs on par with the existing Hakka Affairs Council and Council of Indigenous Peoples.

The revival of a language requires proper allocation of resources and adjustment of existing systems in such public spheres as mass media, Tan said, citing the existence of the government-supported Taiwan Indigenous Television and Hakka TV Station without a Holo counterpart. “Why is there such a difference among the local languages and dialects that equally suffered from the policy of promoting [Mandarin Chinese] as a national language?”

According to Tan, who also teaches Holo at Mackay Medical College in New Taipei, a deep anxiety exists in Taiwan society over a lack of formalized education and adequate exposure to local languages and dialects at schools and in broadcast content among the younger generations.

But LTCF and other language-rescuers see signs of hope and are busy fanning the flames of a Holo renaissance. The Ministry of Culture is also playing its part by drafting a national languages development act, for which a number of public hearings have been held around Taiwan to collect opinions and suggestions from NGO representatives and language instructors. The landmark legislation, scheduled to be sent to the Legislative Yuan for examination later this year, is expected to function as a basic law and guiding principles for reviewing all relevant regulations as in the case of locally ratified U.N. conventions.

LTCF promotes written Holo using Romanized script and Han characters via a number of measures like giving literary awards and publishing periodicals. In addition, it cooperates with other like-minded groups to help meet the increasing demand for Holo language materials. Tan believes NGOs such as her foundation could achieve even greater things if a more enlightened approach to their regulatory oversight was adopted by the government.

As NGOs are supposed to do what the government is not able or inclined to do, regulations for supervising and evaluating these groups must give way to self-monitoring, she said. “We would even be in favor of amending or abolishing the Civil Associations Act.”

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw