MAKING A POINT: The WHO director-general can invite an observer to join the assembly, just as when Taiwan was invited from 2009 to 2016, Joanne Ou said
Taipei Times
Date: May 06, 2020
By: Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter
Taiwan has not yet received an invitation to attend the World Health Assembly (WHA), but would strive until the last moment to participate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
The WHA, the WHO’s decision-making body, is expected to hold a virtual meeting on May 18 for its 73rd session.
Taiwan has not been invited to the WHA since 2016, when the WHO sent Taiwan an invitation two weeks before the assembly, and just before the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) handed over power to the Democratic Progressive Party.
At a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that “some 49 years ago the UN and the WHO decided that there is only one legitimate representative of China within the UN systems, and that is the People’s Republic of China.”
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