According to Paragraph 345 of the ICCPR State Report, Taiwan has widely revised the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act in recent years and expanded the scope of protection. We consider that expanding the scope of the responsible reporting person, but without adding personnel for the following treatment will result in the increase of high-risk cases referred to social workers. Each social worker already has to carry nearly a hundred cases. The state indicated that it was bound by the total number of government employees; to increase personnel in the Social Affairs Department means to reduce personnel in other departments. Whether or not the quality of service meets the demand of children and youths, and whether social workers could shoulder the huge burden, both affect the best interests of children and youths. Such a vicious cycle will definitely compromise the fulfillment of rights to life, protection of family, and protection of children by the state as required by the Covenant.91
The state has proposed to use the concept of sexual exploitation to deal with sex transactions among minors, such as the revisions in the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act. However, regulations on child protection are still insufficient. For example, the penalty for utilizing children and youths to act as escort hostesses or involving them in sexual services is merely a fine of US $2,000 to $10,000, which is far less severe compared to other penalties (articles 35, 36, 38, 40, etc.). As the last line of defense against child and youth sexual exploitation, law enforcement should be stronger. In recent years, children and youths being sexually exploited have been resettled at mid-way schools, which are in many ways operate like correctional facilities, so there is a risk of stigmatization.
There are different standards for the Court to judge physical and mental abuse. The focus is on external injuries. Visible, physical abuse provides evidence more easily. Physical and mental abuses that seem not to have “immediate danger” become easy for judicial personnel to overlook due to the lack of actual evidence on abusive injuries. Consequently, state agencies may deem that there is no need for intervention, and then transfer them to local Social Affairs Department as high-risk treatment cases. This may cause the possible deprivation of children’s rights and benefits, since the state claims inadequate reason for active intervention.92 The state also holds different standards based on the varying identities of the responder.93 In the Judicial Yuan’s statistic report, it is not possible for anyone to know the foundation for the scope of penalties in child abuse cases or the judge’s final judicial decision. As a result, we are unable to ascertain the degree of familiarity of judicial personnel have toward children and youth issues, or how much attention they pay to such cases.
Article 15 of the Family Act rules that the guardian acts as a guarantee for the voice of children and youths or disadvantaged children in hearings relating to family issues. However, blocked channels of supervision and communication as well as the lack of follow-up tracking are problems. There were incidents where the guardian became the means for parents to go against social workers in child protection cases94. Article 5 of the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act demands that state and public organizations consider the best interests of children and youths as priority, and to treat their protection and assistance as top priorities when handling issues related to children and youth. However, the Courts, including guardians and judges all refuse to completely understand case study seminars held by social service agencies because of reasons such as “judicial independence” and “safeguarding judicial decisions,” when it comes to judicial standards. They also refuse to completely understand the situation that children and youths in those cases have to face. This obviously violates the principle of taking the best interests of children and youths in account as priority, and damages the state’s efforts to cooperate on protecting children and youth.
The Family Act does not require guardians to do follow-up tracking on the case subject. Therefore, they have no way to know whether their treatment and judgment are appropriate or not, nor can they increase protection on the rights and benefits of children and youth. It is really not easy to judge on the best interests of children and youths, the Judiciary has attributed the responsibility of tracking cases to social service agencies, yet using the guardian to go against social workers in court, profoundly reducing the effect on assisting children and youths to seek their best wellbeing.
School bullying is getting more and more serious, investigators of gender issues on campus do not have the required professional expertise
In response to Paragraph 355 on page 65 of the State Report, which focuses on the prevention of school bullying, the Ministry of Education’s “Regulations on the Prevention of School Bullying” requires schools to organize campus bullying prevention teams to handle school bullying. In practice, school bullying is getting more and more serious, the main reason is that schools are unwilling to face and actively deal with problems. They merely classify such cases as playfulness among peers. The passive attitude of schools not only affects the physical and mental development of the individual student being bullied, it further influences other students’ behavior. In particular, this passive attitude schools adopt encourage negative peer group behavior seen through culture, thoughts and slangs.
There are still not enough personnel to properly perform investigations on gender issues. Some of the individuals in the in the talent database have not kept up to date with developments in the area. They are not familiar with updates to related laws and regulations, and even lack professionalism when they perform investigations. This is despite the fact that the Ministry of Education has “Directions Regarding Professional Training on Investigation of Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment or Sexual Bullying on Campus and Establishment of Professional Investigators,” and K-12 Education Administration, county and city governments all hold many annual training programs for investigation professionals on campus gender issues.
Instructors of school associations (personnel) and faculties at private schools are not bound by the Reporting System for Unfit Educational Personnel. Perpetrators of bullying can transfer to other units and stay in the education system. This endangers the innocent.
We suggest:
Enhancing the sensitivity of school faculties at all levels toward bullying behavior, to raise their awareness and ability to identify bullying. We also recommend strengthening referrals for guidance for the bully and the victim to correct and prevent problems that develop from bullying.
<li><p>It is necessary to effectively and actively handle bullying, such as strengthening the patrol of campus restrooms, staircases and empty classrooms where incidents of bullying often happen. We also suggest enhancing teachers’ and students’ understanding and respect for others in schools at all levels to establish and improve the friendliness of campus environments.</p></li> <li><p>Adding “instructors of school associations (personnel)” and “faculties at private schools” as objects applicable to Article 10 of the “Regulations on Reporting, Information Gathering and Inquiry of unfit educational personnel.”</p></li> </ol>The Second State Report does not actively face issues regarding violence in intimate relationships among homosexual communities or parental violence toward homosexual children. It highlights the so-called “friendliness” and “acceptance” of Taiwan’s state toward homosexual communities. Such an approach focuses on the legality of articles without being actually and actively translated into “inclusive” practice.
The Association has been providing telephone consultation for 18 years. From telephone calls in the past 5 years, we realize that callers under 18 years of age were mostly facing issues regarding parent-child violence.95 These include being grounded by family members and restrictions on making friends in situations of high-powered control. We can also read from the “Survey Report on the Life Condition of Children and Youths in the Taiwan Region” in 2010 and 2014 that sexual orientation is an issue that causes trouble in the lives of youth.
The current systems of protection from domestic violence and protection of children and youths practiced in Taiwan do not include related discussions, services or statistical data on homosexual children and youths. Moreover, many researches in Taiwan have mentioned “pseudo homosexuality” and “situational homosexuality.” This suggests the erasure of situations homosexual youth encounter in Taiwan. The state has not taken the responsibility to educate the society, such that many parents still misunderstand LGBT groups. This causes risk in parents-child relationships. Parents or the social welfare system also too easily put homosexual children in the position of immaturity and ignorance. This results in questioning the existence of homosexual children and youths, and persuading “changes” in sexual orientation in the name of protection, without helping homosexual youth go through processes of recognition.
Taiwan’s government revised the Domestic Violence Prevention Act in 2007 to include cohabitation in the scope of protection against violence in intimate relationships. However, before the Association and Modern Women’s Foundation researched and developed the “Service Plan for Homosexual Intimacy Violence” in 2009, the system of protection against domestic violence system never seriously ways to help homosexual individuals suffering physical and mental threats in violent relationships. Often, domestic violence protection systems, especially the police, use statements such as “insufficient cases” to avoid the unfriendly and discriminative situations. Despite persuasion and initiatives made by NGOs, there has only been little progress in recent years.
The current intimacy violence service system has not yet included homosexuals in the statistical classification of groups. There is still speculation on the actual number of cases. According to many researches, the occurrence rates of intimacy violence between homosexual and heterosexual couples are almost the same. Therefore, we strongly suspect underreporting, and that there are more homosexual individuals struggling with violence in intimate relationships who have not asked for help from official agencies. The statistics available are limited to homosexual couples who are currently or used to be in cohabitation relationship, and where the party and the counterpart have been entered into the domestic violence system. This usually applies to those who have already reached the stage of ending their intimate relationship, but does not address the prevention and avoidance of violence in intimate relationships. Questions remain regarding ways to assist homosexual couples to facing differences and conflict with each other, as well as the pressure created by structural discrimination in the larger environment. At the foundational level of prevention, we have not seen the state provide enough resources to face issues of violence in intimate relationships involving homosexual persons.
The Association suggests that：
It is necessary to completely survey the current situation, and include sexual orientation and gender identification into the classification statistic for reporting and telephone consultations system. This can improve understanding of the current situation relating to violence among LGBT groups, and provide information about the reduction in social costs that come with the provision of friendly service and support systems. Such initiatives address the current lack of information and systematic research on the prevalence, reasons of occurrence, and means of treatment of homosexual suffering parent-child violence and intimacy violence. At present, information mostly comes from the work experiences of NGOs.
<li><p>Include LGBT sensitivity training into foundational and advanced professional programs for domestic violence and children and youth social workers, or develop review forms especially for LGBT groups. Changes in these areas can help those who work in this field move away from hetero-normativity. Civil departments should establish regular consultation windows to accumulate working experience and knowledge, while forming the support system for colleagues.</p></li> <li><p>Introduce and reinforce LGBT education on campuses and in society to increase recognition of the basic legal protections for homosexual couples, reduce discrimination toward the homosexual community, and establish gender friendly environments. Such steps can help ease the situations of fear and threat surrounding efforts to “come out of the closet.” By raising linkages and acceptance between the homosexual community and mainstream society, initiatives in this area can reduce violence and threats inside the “double closet.”</p></li> </ol>Responding to Paragraph 365 of the State Report, we require that the state individually list companies hiring juvenile laborers in each labor examination. This helps to increase the precision of efforts to understand that rate at which companies violate laws and regulations that protect juvenile workers. Article 44 of the Labor Standards Law defines a child worker as a worker who is over 15 years old, but less than 16 years old. Children under the age of 15 can only engage in work under certain circumstances: They have to be junior high graduates and competent authorities need to determine and authorize that the nature of their work is not hazardous to their well-being. However, on several occasions, children aged 11 to 15 reported that they started working as butchers, restaurant wait staff and even construction workers from as young as 9 or 10. Citing prohibitions in the Labor Standards Law, the Labor Authorities deny that there are child workers in Taiwan with the exception of child actors. We hereby urge the International Review Committee to make inquiries with the relevant ministries regarding the on-the-ground situation of child labor nationwide as well as how the state safeguards children from labor abuses and exploitation.
In response to Paragraph 348 of the second ICCPR State Report: Legitimate and “illegitimate” children currently seem to have equal rights in Taiwan with regard to actual judicial decisions. The distinguishing difference between “illegitimate” and legitimate children is based on the different means of establishing parent-child relationship with the biological father. The legitimate child only needs to establish this relationship on the basis of being born. According to Article 1063 (a) of the Civil Law, “a child so born is presumed to be legitimate.” This is a paternalistic presumption; that is, to the parent-child relationship rests with the husband of the biological mother regardless of his will. For “illegitimate” children, they are not presumed to be “so born (legitimate)”, and must go through legal actions such as adoption or be deemed legitimate (through the marriage of biological parents) in order to establish parent-child relationship with the biological father. If a biological father is unwilling to perform such acts, or if the biological father had passed away and unable to perform as such, the “illegitimate” child will face difficulties in establishing the parent-child relationship with the biological father. In case that the biological father is unwilling to adopt, the “illegitimate” child may sue him for compulsory adoption. However, the Civil Law previously had certain time restrictions on the period for making such lawsuits in the past. Such reasons may make efforts by the “illegitimate” child to solve this issue through lawsuit challenging.
Violation of Article 26 of the Covenant that everyone is equal in before the law and should be protected by the law. The Civil Law protects families far more than individuals.
Although permanent residents under 20 years of age are considered minors with limited capacity, they are totally deprived of rights relating to citizen participation. These include imbalance between rights and obligations, for example, people under 18 years have no rights to stand for election or to vote; labor who are 15 years of age may participate in labor unions but have no right to stand for election as union cadre or to vote. Even though the Civil Code considers people from 7 to 20 years of age as people with limited capacity, the Administrative Procedure Act deprives young people of rights and various citizen participations, such as the right to assembly and organization, regardless of the consent of their legal representatives. We urge to reduce the age on civil rights of election: standing for election, voting, assembly, and organization to 18 years of age. We further suggest that people from 15 but not yet 18 years of age may perform related citizen rights such as assembly and organization if agreed by their legal representatives.
- For example, in a case of child abuse in Chu-Tung, the family had already been an enlisted case by social workers for a long period of time. When social workers visited the family of this brother-and-sister, they felt that this pair of brother-and-sister needed assistance. Yet, because there seemed no immediate danger, they did not initiate an intervention. The abuse of these two children and the death of one of them happened between two visits by social workers. Social workers did not have the power to intervene in advance.
- Take the case of Mr. Yeh in Miaoli neglecting care of children as example. When making a family visit, the homeroom teacher discovered that the child was seriously neglected. The spouse originally taking care of the child had passed away. The widowed single parent who already did not have the ability to fulfill a parent’s duties, had to take responsibility for caring for children. This resulted in unstable career situations and addiction to alcohol, that led the parent to ignore his child. The parent asked his child to take care of his own demands, frequently not giving his child money but asking him to purchase alcohol and cigarettes. If his child did not bring these back, he would scorn, beat or even lock his child outside of the door. After getting drunk, the parent would wake his child up in the middle of the night to scorn him. The parent did not provide regular meals for his child, did not care for his child’s hygiene. The child had a filthy genital area and body odor, which led to rejected by classmates, etc. The child’s school not only let the child take school provided nutritional lunch back home for dinner, but the principal also linked resources for the child to have breakfast at 7-11. The child’s homeroom teacher enabled the child to take showers between classes every other day. The school also informed the Social Affairs Department, but the Social Affairs Department considered the child as being in no immediate danger. So, they did not actively intervene, and only provided economic support and assigned a home service assistant to help clean his home once a week. The parent often prevented his child from going to school because of his own demands, making excuses such as his child being sick. The parent even resorted to trickery by letting his child go to school to check-in to avoid attendance rules and regulations, but county social workers and judicial agencies all considered this child “without immediate danger.” They consequently did not this case as physical and mental abuse, and did not provide active protection.
- Details refer to Kaohsiung High Administrative Court Litigation No. 350 Judicial decision in 2002, Kaohsiung High Administrative Court Litigation No. 64 Judicial decision in 2007, Taichung High Administrative Court Litigation No. 195 Judicial decision in 2009, Taipei High Administrative Court Litigation No. 2182 Judicial decision in 2008, Taipei High Administrative Court Litigation No. 1965 Judicial decision in 2010, the Supreme Court Tai Appeal No. 773 Judicial decision in 2010.
- For example, there was a case of neglect and abuse of a child whose family name is Chen in Hsinchu County (this case did not appear on the news because there was no severe harm). The mother of the child has borderline personality disorder and often did not take care of her son. After receiving reports, the government resettled the child with a guardian, whose family name is Hsu. The guardian was influenced by the mother of the child and therefore believed that the County government grabbed her son. The guardian consequently ignored the records and actual observations that County social workers and agencies presented about the mother’s neglect and inability to perform parental duties. On the contrary, the guardian felt that social workers demanded too much of the mother. During case processing, the Social Affairs Department invited the guardian to attend case study seminars, but the guardian refused on the basis of judicial neutrality and told the mother that he would do her justice. Finally, the Court accepted the guardian’s evaluation and rejected the extended resettlement request made by the Social Affairs Department. The mother immediately moved her household registration from Hsinchu County afterwards to get rid of the social workers who cared about her son, and handed her son to a 24-hour babysitter in another county. This was in total contradiction from what she had told the guardian. The mother previously indicated to the guardian that, “I want to be with my child every day” and “I cannot live one day without my child.” Instead, the mother acted in ways consistent with the expectations from the county case study seminar.
- For the entire year, among calls received by the help hotlines for homosexual youth, about 30~40% （especially lesbian couples）mentioned that one of the parties was under high-power control, grounded, and restricted from making friends by their family.