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Tsutomu Nishioka

【#1365】Takaichi Should Step Up Efforts in History Wars at the UN

Tsutomu Nishioka ／ 2026.04.28 (Tue)


April 27, 2026

　
On March 6, 17 United Nations human rights experts (seven special rapporteurs appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council and 10 members of two relevant working groups) issued a press release expressing grave concern at the continued lack of justice, truth and reparations regarding the wartime comfort women issue and calling on the Japanese government to pay reparations. These experts are working in their individual capacity.

Condemning Japan for the comfort women issue

The experts claimed that up to 200,000 women and girls were reportedly subjected to trafficking, rape, and sexual slavery, as well as to arbitrary deprivation of liberty and, in certain cases, to enforced disappearance and that “previous efforts to address this issue, such as the 2015 bilateral agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea, have failed to deliver survivor-centered justice.”

Citing the principle of international law that no state can be tried by another state’s court, the experts said, “Sovereign immunity should not serve as grounds to waive accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Following this logic, the South Korean courts have issued two district court rulings and one high court ruling ordering the Japanese government to pay reparations to former comfort women. The Japanese government has invoked sovereign immunity and does not recognize the proceedings themselves, but the UN human rights experts condemned this stance.

Former comfort women from six countries, including South Korea, China, and Indonesia, filed a petition with the U.N. Human Rights Council for relief, prompting human rights experts to request responses from their and Japanese governments in letters to them in July 2025. The Japanese government rejected the petition based on the Japan-South Korea comfort women agreement and the sovereign immunity principle.

The United Nations institutions, especially the Human Rights Council in Geneva and other human rights-related organizations, have emphasized a framework that views states as potential oppressors of their citizens and have developed mechanisms for victims of human rights abuses to file petitions directly with U.N. organizations without going through their respective governments.

In fact, totalitarian countries such as China and Iran severely oppress their citizens, and in countries where such oppression is intense, governments closely monitor their citizens’ petitions with U.N. organizations and carry out state‑wide propaganda to deny oppression.

On the other hand, liberal democracies, including Japan, have some domestic groups that try to degrade their own countries even by distorting facts. These groups have exploited the United Nations to spread their lies and put pressure on their governments. Japanese groups such as the Buraku Liberation League and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations began their activities at the United Nations as early as the late 1980s.

Inherit Abe's wish

Regarding the comfort women issue, the Japanese government under then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched public communications in 2016 to deny an allegation that 200,000 women were coercively recruited as sex slaves. However, the government made no mention of this denial in its response to the U.N. human rights experts’ letter. Abe told the National Diet that the government would respond to the slander about comfort women that was spreading in the international community. Returning to that starting point, the current Sanae Takaichi administration should strengthen its government‑wide efforts on issues related to historical awareness.

Tsutomu Nishioka is a senior fellow and a Planning Committee member at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and a specially-appointed professor at Reitaku University. He covers South and North Koreas.