I searched for all the non-profit organization regarding Taiwan’s political status for this assignment. I have found one that could be qualify as a non-profit: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). UNPO is an international, nonviolent, and democratic membership organization, consists of people who are indigenous, minorities, unrecognized or occupied territories. Its goal is to protect and promote their human and culture rights, preserve environments, and find nonviolent solutions to conflicts that affect those people.
UNPO has established a sub branch call Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) to represent and voice Taiwan’s status since 2006. One interesting thing to point out about TFD is that although TFD is now a non-profit under UNPO, but back when TFD was found under Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affair (equivalent to US’s Department of State), it was an afflicted political entity.
I found a section that give the viewers a general introduction of the island of Taiwan, including its political structure, past histories under different ruling entity, and its current challenges. From the page, I found where UNPO stands at in terms of Taiwan political status. Base on the idea of UNPO, it is not surprised to see that UNPO think Taiwan should be recognized as an independent, should also be allow to fully participate in the United Nations. UNPO condemns all actions PRC take that threatens Taiwan’s political identity, and commends Taiwan’s democratization efforts for the Asia-Pacific region, and welcomes any peaceful resolution to resolve the issue.
From going through UNPO’s website, I realized that the action that UNPO takes has no enforcing authority, all it can really do is to voice out their opinion to the public. Which mean for my issue specifically, not to sound harsh, but has no real impact to the issue. In other words, since my issue is based on the conflicts of interest between the government of Taiwan and PRC, that means the issue is strictly political, therefore both government can simply ignore UNPO’s comments and opinions. Which effectively, renders UNPO’s action “useless”.
To get involve with UNPO, it will require me to be an intern or volunteer for UNPO. The challenges that exist is that UNPO is looking for intern who is major in international relations, political science, international law or development of political geography, none of the major overlaps with my aviation engineering major. Furthermore, as of right now, no internship nor volunteer position is being offer.
For the Ted talk video, I cannot find any video that has to do with non-profit regarding Taiwan’s political status.