President Ma Ying-jeou has met with Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi and praised his efforts to defend children’s rights in India.
During the meeting, which took place Friday, Ma said that Taiwan does not have a child labor problem. However, he said that Taiwan did have a child prostitution problem until fairly recently.
Ma told Satyarthi that during his term as justice minister in the mid-1990s, he promoted legislation designed to stop child prostitution. He said that child prostitution in Taiwan has since fallen to less than 10% of its pre-1996 levels.
Ma said that anti-child prostitution campaigner Maureen Crombie praised Taiwan’s work towards preventing the sexual abuse of children during an awards ceremony three years ago.
Ma expressed support for Satyarthi’s efforts to promote free compulsory education for children in India. Ma also said he had been deeply moved by Satyarthi’s call for the Taliban to release the children it had taken hostage during last year’s Peshawar school siege and kill him instead. Ma told Satyarthi that Taiwan is happy to assist in his mission to promote children’s rights around the world.