To promote the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which Taiwan began to implement in 2014, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized a team to take part in the 2019 Taipei Dragon Boat Festival in June. During the festival, the team distributed materials calling for assistance for disabled persons to attend the event. The use of this social event for experiential learning, as well as the outreach to encourage disabled persons to visit the festival, together demonstrated Taiwan's commitment to promoting the CRPD and human rights work. Diplomatic representatives of Belize, Kiribati, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, and Solomon Islands based in Taiwan came to support the event, and teams of competitors from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, and the United States took part in the races, which ran from June 7 to 9.
To more effectively protect the rights of disabled persons, MOFA assisted the Ministry of Justice in collecting information on adult guardianship laws in 10 nations that have signed or ratified the CRPD (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Peru, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States). This information was used as a reference in planning a system which would as far as possible respect the wishes of disabled persons and take into account their decisions.
CRPD General Comment No. 1 on Article 12 (equal recognition before the law) indicates that States parties must abolish discriminatory denial of legal capacity on the basis of disability, and must “review the laws allowing for guardianship and trusteeship, and take action to develop laws and policies to replace regimes of substitute decision-making by supported decision-making,” which respects the person's will.
#Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
#CRPD General Comment No. 1 (Article 12: equal recognition before the law)
#Adult guardianship