By Andy Kang-I Chen

While many countries around the world are battling hard against coronavirus surge, Taiwan has achieved a record of 200 days without a single locally transmitted case.

Thanks to a rapid response and advance preparedness, Taiwan’s per-million cases and deaths are very low: 0.03 deaths per 100,000. Taiwan with a population of 23.5 million has just 568 infections and seven deaths.

Meanwhile, life and work have continued much as normal for the majority of people. For instance, Taiwan’s National Day celebration took place in Keelung City earlier in October with a crowd of about 12,000 people.

On October 31, approximately 130,000 people attended the annual Taiwan LGBT Pride in Taipei, making it the world’s biggest in-person LGBTQ celebration since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Bloomberg Economics has ranked Taiwan first among 75 countries on three major indices concerning public health, economic activity, and policy.

Taiwan’s economy has also proven resilient: the Asian Development Bank forecast that Taiwan’s economic performance in 2020 would be the best among the Four Asian Tigers—the only one to show positive growth.

Taiwan is willing to share its experience combatting COVID-19. It has provided four waves of international antipandemic humanitarian assistance by providing over 55 million masks and PPE to more than 80 countries around the world including the United States, Canada, Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, and European nations.

Furthermore, Taiwan has shared the successful Taiwan Model by holding 77 videoconferences with officials, hospitals, universities, and think tanks of 32 nations. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver also donated more than 70,000 medical face masks and sanitizers to school boards, NGOs, and the Indigenous community.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has continued to call on the world to come together to fight the pandemic and work toward recovery. However, for political considerations, WHO has refused to invite Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer or to allow Taiwan’s full participation in meetings, mechanisms, and technical meetings related to COVID-19.

This has not only deprived the 23.5 million people of Taiwan of their right to health, it has also been unhelpful in the global struggle to defeat COVID-19. This also set an unfortunate precedent for rules-based global governance.

The successful Taiwan Model can help other countries combat the pandemic. To recover better together, the WHO needs Taiwan.

A total of 644 parliamentarians from 25 European countries have signed a petition calling on the WHO to include Taiwan in the annual WHA, which is scheduled to resume virtually next week from November 9 to 14.

Canada has long been a supporter of Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. I sincerely hope that Canada will continue to advocate and facilitate the inclusion of Taiwan to the WHA.