Initiatives by Citizens of a Perpetrator State: Advocating to UN Human Rights Bodies for the Rights of Survivors

Abstract

Concerned citizens in Japan have taken various actions in order to hold the government of Japan accountable for crimes and human rights violations committed during WWII under Japan’s military sexual slavery system, euphemistically called the “comfort women” system. In the early 1990s, citizens of Japan joined the redress movement initiated by the victims/survivors of the “comfort women” system and their supporters in victimized countries. Citizens and scholars began undertaking fact-finding research, while lawyers supported victims filing lawsuits against the Japanese government. With respect to international human rights bodies, in an attempt to make the government of Japan accountable under international human rights law, as early as 1992, attorney at-law, Mr Totsuka Etsuro, began providing information to the then-UN Commission on Human Rights and the then-Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Violence against women, especially rape and sexual violence during war and armed conflict, was one of the biggest concerns of global women’s movements in the 1990s. The victims/survivors of Japan’s military sexual slavery system who testified in international fora gave important impetus not only to women’s rights activists but also to those who specialized in human rights law. Since then, a number of recommendations on this matter have been issued by UN special rapporteurs, UN human rights treaty bodies and international human rights NGOs. The Violence Against Women in War Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan)1 began submitting reports and lobbying UN Human Rights institutions in August 2002 following the December 2001 final judgement of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery delivered in The Hague, the Netherlands. The purpose of the first submission was to inform UN Human