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Event Detail

Japan: ILO/Asia Foundation Discuss Japan's Anti-Trafficking Policies

Event Details

The Asia Foundation and the International Labor Organization (ILO) hosted a half day symposium on "Trafficking of Women to Japan" in Tokyo on January 22, 2003. The approximately two hundred and fifty attendees included students, university professors, NGO representatives, labor union members, embassy personnel, and Diet staffers. The keynote speaker was the Thai Ambassador to Japan who gave compelling remarks on what the Thai Embassy in Tokyo is doing to assist Thai women who are trafficked to Japan. The goals of the symposium's two panels were to discuss the situation of women who are trafficked to Japan, as well as the need to strengthen Japanese anti trafficking laws and tools for assisting victims of trafficking in Japan. The presenters of the first panel very effectively outlined how women are recruited into trafficking and how they are treated once they arrive in Japan. There was an account of an actual victim's difficult experience in escaping sexual bondage. Audience members gained an accurate picture of the criminal nature of this issue, and officials of the government of Japan gained a better idea of why they should be encouraged to make deliberate efforts to provide refuge to victims.

In the second panel, presenters discussed how current Japanese laws can be applied to trafficking, what legal changes may need to be undertaken to allow Japan to fulfill its obligations under the United Nations Convention on Transnational Crime, with its supplemental Protocol on Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and how more legislation is needed to allow Japan to assert that it is fully complying with its commitments to the United Nations. Most experts strongly advocated for Japan to pass laws specifically applying to anti trafficking efforts, including "visa amnesty," and financial and legal assistance to victims of trafficking. The presenters of the two panels included NGO representatives, a policy analyst from Columbia University, a representative from the National Police Agency, a lawyer for the YWCA, and a Social Democratic Party Diet member.