1. On October 31, the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review Working Group held a session to review the human rights situations in Japan. This was based on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) system, founded by the adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251 (this resolution also established the Human Rights Council). Since 2008, the UPR has reviewed every UN member-state's human rights situations in a four-year cycle. Japan was reviewed for the first time in the second session in 2008, and was secondly reviewed in the fourteenth session in October 2012.

2. At the first UPR, 26 recommendations were adopted against Japan, and the Japanese government accepted 13 of them (including the foundation of an independent institution for reviewing claims of human rights violations within Japan; the acceptance of the individual complaints procedure of human rights treaties; the development of legal systems to ensure gender equality). However, the implementation process until today cannot be said to be sufficient, and consultation with civil society has not been sufficiently guaranteed. 

An international human rights NGO Human Rights Now (HRN) has repeatedly criticized that the Japanese government does not effectively implement the UPR recommendations. At the session on 31 October, many member-states made same recommendations as in 2008.

Particularly, the following issues have been repeatedly raised by many states, showing strong concerns from the international community. The issues are:

The foundation of an independent human rights protection institution based on the Paris Principles; the realization of the individual complaints procedure of human rights treaties; the total visualization of investigation and the attendance of defense counsel to the investigation; the reform of criminal justice including the reform of the pre-trial detention system; the suspension of capital punishment and the encouragement of debate about the abolition of capital punishment; the reform of the treatment of condemned criminals based on the international human rights standard; the solution of the comfort women issues; an effort to end violence against women and human trafficking, and the empowerment of women; and the revision of the Civil Code provisions which discriminate women and illegitimate children.

At this session, in particular, several recommendations were made to request the Japanese government to take further measures to combat the discrimination against women, disabled people, foreigners and LGBT people. It is required for the Japanese government to take solid and effective policies to truly end the discrimination against these people. The Japanese government should take into account the strong concerns of the international society and should work seriously for the implementation of the recommendations.

3. In addition, at the current session, the necessity of human rights education for civil servants and at school education was raised by several states, which thus needed to be paid attention. The Japanese government is required to review and improve the current insufficient human rights education policies.

4. In regard to the issues occurred after the first UPR session, HRN has been providing information on the serious human rights violations of the affected people by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and the following accident of the Fukushima Daiich Nuclear Power Plant.

At the session on October 31, 2012, the recommendations which asked the government to take necessary measures to protect the health of people living in Fukushima, and to comply with the visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health scheduled in November, and to secure the opportunities of the civil society to meet with the Special Rapporteur, were adopted. These recommendations are highly important, thus HRN urges the government to implement them in a serious manner.

5. HRN requests to the Japanese government to accept all recommendations made in the session on October 31 and also to implement them with active collaboration with the civil society for the improvement of human rights situations in Japan.

Fin.

                                                                                                                27/11/2012

Human Rights Now