Honorable Chair, fellow delegates, most esteemed guests,

For more than 150 years, the international community has

been in agreement that warfare should be made less
inhumane, through the rules and principles of international
humanitarian law. Civilians should be protected in armed
conflict. We need to prevent and to respond to mass atrocity
crimes, in accordance with the Responsibility to Protect.
Japan is a liberal democracy with the third largest economy
,an established rule of law and a vibrant civil society.
It was the 1946 Constitution of Japan (Nihon Koku Kenpo)
that formally adopted human rights, with a provision on
“fundamental human rights” in Article 11. The 1946
Constitution also provides for women suffrage and the
separation of state powers as a principle of democratic
Japanese government.

The Japanese government identifies several human rights

issues in the country relating to children (particularly on
bullying, corporal punishment, child abuse, child prostitution,
and child pornography), elderly persons, persons with
disabilities, Dowa Issues (or discrimination against the
Burakumin), Ainu people (indigenous people in Japan),
foreign nationals, HIV carriers, Hansen's disease patients,
persons released from prison after serving their sentence,
crime victims, people whose human rights are violated using
the Internet, the homeless, persons with identity disorders,
and women. The issue of sexual preferences is also listed as a
human rights [i] problem. Japanese human rights
organizations add other human rights issues involving
government officials such as in the case of daiyo
kangoku(substitute prison) system and the interrogation
process for crime suspects.[ii]

Japan has not established a national human rights institution.

The Japanese government undertakes human rights
promotion and protection work through the two major,
parallel systems: the Human Rights Bureau under the
Ministry of Justice and the Human Rights Volunteers.

The Human Rights Bureau works along with eight Human

Rights Departments under the MOJ’s Legal Bureaus located
in eight major cities in the country. These government
human rights organs deal with “human rights infringements”
which are defined as “not only against the law but also are
against the spirit of respecting human rights, which is the
basic principle of the Constitution of Japan and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.[iv]
Parallel to the existence of the Human Rights Bureau is the
group of Human Rights Volunteers (around 14,000 volunteers
existing in the country) who are appointed by the Minister of
Justice. They are “people in various fields [who] should work
to encourage respect for human rights, make efforts to avoid
infringements of the rights of residents, and protect human
rights in the local community.