Taiwan's official human rights watchdog says a plan to bring back caning as criminal punishment breaks the country's human rights commitments — a setback for backers of the tougher approach.

• Lawmakers narrowly approved a referendum proposal to let courts sentence people to caning for sex crimes, child abuse, and large-scale fraud.
• The National Human Rights Commission says caning is degrading and clashes with a UN human rights treaty Taiwan has written into its own law.
• The measure was pushed by the opposition Kuomintang and passed by a single vote, 52 to 51.
• Two other proposals passed at the same time — one on traffic fines, one to scrap Taiwan's non-nuclear energy policy.

Outlook: Election officials review the proposals on Aug. 21 and, if cleared, the votes would be held alongside local elections on Nov. 28.