Taiwan has been excluded from the World Health Assembly (WHA) for the tenth consecutive year, with the World Health Organisation's 79th annual WHA — which opened on Monday in Geneva — proceeding without an invitation to Taipei. The exclusion, according to the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance in Taiwan (MPAT), reflects a deliberate and sustained campaign by Beijing to manipulate the UN system and the international legal order to reshape cross-strait relations in its favour.

How the Exclusion Unfolded

Both the WHA General Committee and the Plenary Session rejected a proposal to invite Taiwan as an observer — repeating a pattern that has held since Taiwan's last participation in 2016. During the plenary hearing on Taiwan's participation, China and Pakistan argued for continued exclusion, while Palau and Paraguay spoke in Taiwan's favour.

China reiterated the three pillars of its 'one China' principle: that there is only one China in the world, that Taiwan is a part of China, and that Beijing is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China. According to MPAT, Beijing also 'twisted' the meaning of UN Resolution 2758, the 1971 resolution that recognised the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate government and enabled it to replace Taiwan as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

What MPAT and Taiwan's Allies Said

MPAT executive director Lin Shih-chia said Beijing repeatedly accuses Taiwan of disrupting the 'status quo', while it is China that is manipulating cross-strait relations and leveraging the UN and the WHA to escalate tensions. This framing — that China is the disruptor, not the defender, of the status quo — represents a direct rebuttal to Beijing's standard diplomatic line.

Palau called Taiwan's exclusion a 'public health imperative' rather than a political question, warning that keeping Taiwan out 'weakens global disease surveillance, delays information sharing and undermines collective preparedness.' Paraguay echoed this concern, cautioning that with the 'resurgence of infectious diseases and zoonotic threats', excluding any actor with proven capacities is 'a risk for all of us.'

Pakistan's Role and the Political Alignment

Pakistan backed China's position, arguing that the question of Taiwan's participation 'falls beyond the mandate' of the WHA and urging member states to focus on the technical health agenda. Critics argue this framing conveniently sidesteps the public health consequences of Taiwan's absence — a gap that became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Taiwan's early warning systems were sidelined from WHO channels.

The Broader Pattern

This is the tenth year in a row that Taiwan has been shut out of the WHA, and the pattern points to a structural problem: Beijing's diplomatic leverage within multilateral institutions has grown to the point where it can reliably block Taiwan's participation year after year, regardless of Taiwan's demonstrated public health contributions. The misuse of Resolution 2758 — a document that addressed UN representation, not territorial sovereignty over Taiwan — has become a recurring flashpoint. Notably, several democratic governments have in recent years pushed back against this interpretation, but that pushback has not yet translated into votes at the WHA.

With global health threats growing and multilateral cooperation increasingly essential, Taiwan's continued exclusion from the WHA remains a contested fault line in the broader contest over the rules-based international order.