We have sent a petition and open letter to United Nations Special Rapporteurs and Working Groups on human rights* urging two actions on behalf of the last survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual violence and their descendants — the former “comfort women”.

These two actions are the same two recourses addressed in this Change.org petition:

(1) Referral of outstanding disputes concerning WWII-era military sexual slavery to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) through a joint agreement; or

(2) Initiation of an inter-state procedure pursuant to the Convention against Torture as a survivor-centered remedy to the acts inflicted upon the “comfort women”.

The full petition with appendices is available here. Included in the petition are letters on behalf of 6 of the remaining known 12 survivors in S. Korea --

• Lee Yong-soo
• Kang Il-chul
• Lee Ok-seon (b. 1928)
• Lee Ok-seon (b. 1930)
• Park Ok-seon
• Park Pilgeun

-- as well as letters on behalf of:

• Peng Zhuying (China)
• the family of Jan Ruff-O’Herne (Netherlands)
• survivors in Timor Leste & Indonesia

Each of the (Korean) survivors’ seven demands for justice is discussed in detail here, as well as an analysis of the so-called “12.28 Joint Announcement”.

We also discuss the Japanese government's past apologies, monetary payments, and lobbying against memorials and statues, including a "comfort girl" statue in Atlanta that was relocated to a public park in the suburb of Brookhaven, where a remembrance of the 8 victims killed last year on March 16, 2021, was recently held. 

Currently, the Japanese government publicly denies the “forceful taking away” of “comfort women” and rejects that the victims were “sex slaves” on its foreign ministry website.

In their final years, the “comfort women” survivors remain deprived of the basic comfort of turning on the news without seeing yet another spokesperson or advisor for Japan’s government insinuating that “comfort women” went willingly to those terrible places created by Imperial Japan.

The two requested actions are urgent because the survivors are in their 90s, and their numbers are rapidly dwindling by the day. Grandma Lee Yong-soo, who is 94 years old, has described her efforts as a final campaign for justice.

Therefore, we have asked the UN human rights experts to ensure that the governments involved undertake concrete action to effectuate the survivors’ demands.

The UN human rights experts are:

* Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences
* Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
* Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
* Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children
* Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
* Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence
* Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice
* Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances