The Children’s Rights Council of Japan

(This document originally appeared on www.crcjapan.com.  Subsequently, all content was moved to www.crnjapan.com and the internet links here have been updated along with some but not all text..)

Website:   (English)   or   (CRN日本ウエブサイト：日本語)

Personal Stories written by members:

Lost Parents Page:    (日本語版もあります。)

CRC/CRN Japan Coalition Report to the United Nations:   

Media Requests for information or interviews with members:

Our Mission is to restore the rights of children subject to parental separation in Japan, such as divorce, international parental abduction to Japan, parental abduction within Japan and birth out of wedlock. We want to assure these children of meaningful and continuing contact with both parents and both extended families, regardless of the parents' citizenship or marital status.

CRC Japan provides experienced-based information on parental abduction, child custody, and visitation rights in Japan, and have a large collection of English language information on Japanese Family Law.  We also provide a web based service to help children contact left-behind parents.

Finally, we are striving to change Japanese attitudes and laws that have led to this systematic and pervasive failure to uphold the rights of children. To this end, we document cases of parental abduction, denied visitation rights, discrimination, child abuse and other such activities in Japan.

Quotes

“The Department of State is not aware of any case in which a child taken from the United States by one parent has been ordered returned to the United States by Japanese courts, even when the left-behind parent has a United States custody decree."

US State Department website "International Parental Abduction - Japan" (cached copy).

“With respect to children born out of wedlock, discrimination, such as that mentioned in the following seven points is provided for under legislation.  The number of discriminations resulting from this kind of legal system is beyond measure.”

Japan Federation of Bar Associations, reporting on Japan’s implementation of the CRC,  June 1, 2003   (cached copy)

“Since it was founded in 1994, CRC Japan has worked closely with over 100 cases of abduction or retention.  We know of only one case where a foreigner was able to get custody from a Japanese, and in that case, the foreign parent used Japanese law to deny meaningful access to the Japanese parent.” 

Walter Benda, co-founder of Children’s Rights Council of Japan.

  The NCMEC has never been able to successfully resolve any of the cases on their books involving Japan.

Lena Alhusseini, Walter Benda’s case worker at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, +1-877-446-2632 x6443 (703-837-6244)

“With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.”

Japanese Constitution, Article 24

“All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.”

Japanese Constitution, Article 14