"Face The Truth"

Do Not Give Japan
A Permanent Seat On The UN Security Council !

The Japan Children’s Rights Network firmly opposes a seat on the United Nations Security Council for Japan until:

1. Japan enacts enforceable laws to implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantee all children of direct, meaningful and continuing contact with both parents, regardless of citizenship, marital status or gender;

2. Japan signs the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and enacts enforceable laws to implement its provisions;

3. Japan implements an enforceable national anti-racial discrimination law that fulfills its obligations under the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Japan must live up to its international promises
before it can be trusted to protect international security.

Related Articles

• JAPAN'S DISINGENUOUSNESS : "We support human rights!"  Just don't scratch the surface.; website of Arudou Debito, well known Japanese human rights activist.  A more detailed examination of the lack of protections for human rights in Japan.

• Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance : Mission To Japan (If this link gives you a "No Authorization" error, see our cached copy.); January 24, 2006, Doudou Diène.  Mr. Doudou Dienen (Senegal) was appointed by the Commission on Human Rights as Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in 2002. He made two trips to Japan to investigate racism in 2005 and 2006.  You can find more information on Mr. Diene and his reports on racism in Japan on Arudou Debito's website. (His report on racism in Japan is available on the United Nations website.  Page down to "E/CN.4/2006/16/Add.2, Mission to Japan", and click on "Advance Edited Version E" - The E is a single letter and can be hard to see.)  (cached copy)

• List of the Children section from each yearly US State Department Country Report on Human Rights in Japan, 1999-2006 - includes a link to the full report for each year with information on prostitution, child pornography, trafficking in persons/women, spousal and child abuse, police torture etc. and a summary of widely reported on human rights events for each year.

• Trafficking in Persons Report; United States Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons; June 14, 2004. Japan was put onto the Tier 2 Watch List this year.  This event is what got Japan started on the few human rights reforms that it has made in recent years.

• Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation; Dr. Donna Hughes, Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island, reports that as recently as 1998 Japan was the world's largest producer of child pornography.  

Text from the video "Face The Truth"

You can see the video here.

In the 2005 Japan petitioned for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, which is charged with maintaining peace and security among all nations. The Security Council has the power to make decisions, which member governments must carry out under the United Nations Charter.

Should we trust Japan? Let's see what recent history tells us.

On November 20th 1989 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)

The UNCRC is an international human rights treaty that grants children in signatory countries a comprehensive set of rights which help to protect them in the face of international divorces and other forms of parental separation.

Japan became a party to the convention and ratified the UNCRC on May 22 1994... To this day Japan will not enforce this treaty protecting children in Japan.

UNCRC Article 7:
The child shall ... have ... the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

“Japan's family courts have rules and procedures that hide a sad truth: They are powerless to protect the parent-child relationship when a divorce turns hostile.” - San Francisco Chronicle, August 2006

UNCRC Article 8:
Parties shall undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations…

“French courts sentence mother to jail…father rescues custodial daughter from a children's home, but Japanese courts allow mother to abduct and change the daughter's name.” – Z Magazine, February 2004

UNCRC Article 9:
Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will.

“… because Japan does not respect international treaties on children's rights to have access to their parents, Japan is a virtual haven for parental abduction. That means, when a marriage falls apart and one parent is determined to keep the children away from the other, there is little the other parent can do about it.” – Asahi Shinbun, December 2002

UNCRC Article 9:
Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis

“Visitation, a matter of course in most U.S. divorces, is in Japan a vaguely defined notion created by judicial precedent and only sometimes described as a right. In reality, both custody and visitation are effectively administrative decisions made at the discretion of judges and untrained mediators, some of whom may even regard visitation as harmful to children.” - San Francisco Chronicle, August 2006

UNCRC Article 10:
A child whose parents reside in different [countries] shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis, personal relations and direct contacts with both parents.

After both the Osaka District and Appellate Courts validated one American father's US custody order, the Japanese Family Court granted him a mere three hours of visitation per year.

"The Japanese mother had physical possession, and continued to deny [the father's] custodial rights. At no point, even two years later after the [Japanese] Supreme Court validated [his] custody, would a Japanese court or the police return his son. The intractability of the situation eventually forced him to give up custody in exchange for an unenforceable visitation agreement.” – Japan Times, July 2006

UNCRC Article 18:
Parties shall use best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child.

“Dividing the upbringing of children between the two halves of an estranged couple is not necessarily easy in any country, but in Japan it is virtually impossible.” – Reuters, February 2004

UNCRC Article 35:
Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction of … children for any purpose or in any form.

“Japan is serving as a "safe haven" for international parental child abduction” – Kyodo News, January 2006

In addition to breaking it's promises to the UNCRC there are also other international treaties that Japan flaunts and disregards.

Japan signed the United Nations Convention on Eliminating Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 1995. Yet on January 4, 2006, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Doudou Diene, published a report saying,

"Racial discrimination is practiced undisturbed in Japan."
"It can hardly be argued that Japan is respecting its international obligations."

Unsurprisingly, Japan is the only OECD country without a law against racial discrimination.

Japan is the only G7 nation that refuses to sign the Hague Treaty on International Parental Abduction and has become known as a Haven For Parental Abductors.

“In cases of international parental child abduction, foreign parents are greatly disadvantaged in Japanese courts, both in terms of obtaining the return of children to the United States, and in achieving any kind of enforceable visitation rights in Japan.” -US Department of State website.

If Japan cannot be trusted to protect children and people of different races within it’s own country, and will not honor its obligations under the United Nations CRC and CERD treaties, can Japan be trusted with the responsibility of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council?

We say NO!

The Japan Children’s Rights Network firmly opposes a seat on the United Nations Security Council for Japan until,

1) Japan enacts enforceable laws to implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guarantee all children of direct, meaningful and continuing contact with both parents, regardless of citizenship, marital status or gender;

2) Japan signs the Hague Convention on International Parental Abduction and enacts enforceable laws to implement its provisions;

3) Japan implements an enforceable anti-racial discrimination law. to fulfill its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Japan must live up to its international promises before it can be trusted to protect international security.

For more information on Children's Rights in Japan please visit:

www.crnjapan.com/unsecuritycouncil

For more information on Racial Discrimination in Japan please visit:

www.debito.org/roguesgallery.html

(C) BT Media LLC