Critique of Japan's Second Periodic Report to United Nations on Convention on the Rights of the Child (CoRC)

On January 12, 2004, a Coalition of 10 NGO groups submitted the following critique of Japan's Second Periodic Report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.  Japan's report is one that each signatory country must submit once every five years. 

When reading this, note that this report by Japan was due in 2001, yet submitted in 2003. (Many many reports appear to be late like this, not just Japan's.)   There was a preliminary review in October of 2003, and the Committee will officially consider the report during their January 12-31, 2004 meeting.  According to the schedule in this press release, the will consider Japan's report on  Wednesday, 28 January from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 3-6 p.m.

Coalition Critique.  (HTML)  (WORD) (PDF)

Home Page of the Committee on the Rights of the Child

Bilingual Brief on United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child  (WORD) (PDF)

Japan Related United Nations Documents

The version on the UN or MOFA site are the originals in English and Japanese.   The WORD, HTML, or PDF versions are local copies.

*1) Includes Japan's Reservations and Declarations stated at time of signing, inserted by CRN Japan.

*2) The number of clauses in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website version do not match the official English version on the UN website.  (They are the same in both the English and Japanese versions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)  This is likely due to the fact that the UN edits reports after submission.  But the UN version is the official one, so please reference that one if possible.  We have not been able to locate a Japanese translation of the official UN version yet but are looking.

*3) The version on the MOFA site is spread over several pages.   This local copy has been reformatted into a single page format more suitable for printing.

(*4) The original was only available in PDF format, so we copies the text into an HTML file.  Unfortunately, formatting was lost.

(*5) The original was only available as an image or an image inside a PDF file, so we used OCR to produce this HTML file.  There may be errors, so please confirm critical information with the original image.

NGO Reports on Japan

There were about 18 NGO reports on Japan in 2003/2004.  They will be put onto the CRIN website sometime in February.  So look back later.

Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) Related Information

The MOFA is important because they are the ones who disseminate information about the CoRC.  Its unclear who exactly writes it, but it could be them also.

Main Ministry of Foreign Affairs index page for Human Rights in General (Japanese)

Main Ministry of Foreign Affairs page on Children and Human Rights (Japanese)

Japan's Reservations and Declarations at Signing

Source: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/treaty15_asp.htm

Reservation:

"In applying paragraph (c) of article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Japan reserves the right not to be bound by the provision in its second sentence, that is, `every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child's best interest not to do so', considering the fact that in Japan as regards persons deprived of liberty, those who are below twenty years of age are to be generally separated from those who are of twenty years of age and over under its national law."

Declarations:

1. The Government of Japan declares that paragraph 1 of article 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child be interpreted not to apply to a case where a child is separated from his or her parents as a result of deportation in accordance with its immigration law.

2. The Government of Japan declares further that the obligation to deal with applications to enter or leave a State Party for the purpose of family re-unification `in a positive, humane and expeditious manner' provided for in paragraph 1 of article 10 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child be interpreted not to affect the outcome of such applications."

Other Japan Based Organizations

Network for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Japanese only)

Save The Children Japan (Japanese only)

Organization for Writing an NGO Report on Japan's 2nd Periodic CoRC Report (Japanese Only)

Other Background

List of ALL UN documents about Japan (including but not limited to the CoRC treaty)

Guide to submitting NGO Comments (local copy)

Participation guidelines for NGOs and other partners. (local copy)

More Background from the NGO Group (interface between NGOs and the UNHCHR on CoRC

NGO Written Submissions  (similar to above document)

Pre-Sessional Working Group

Keep following the links at the bottom of these pages.  There are 5 or 6 in total.