Recognizing "comfort women" to help address modern sexual slavery: Parliamentary coalition

Recognizing the historic harm caused to comfort women in the Second World War could help provide a precedent to understand and address modern day equivalents, a newly formed international coalition of parliamentarians against sexual slavery said here Monday.

"The resolution of the Japanese military's comfort women issue will serve as a model for addressing the issue of girls' and women's wartime human rights for future generations," said Canadian Senator Yonah Martin, a co-chair of the coalition.

Martin made the statement as she was speaking at the launch of the International Parliamentary Coalition for Victims of Sexual Slavery (IPCVSS). The coalition has founding members from Canada, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea, and hopes to expand to include members from a broad range of countries.

It is estimated that 200,000 women from around Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Second World War, yet after more than 70 years; the Japanese government is yet to provide an apology to the issue.

Jasmine Lee, the co-chair of the coalition and a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, said that there were ongoing meetings between the Republic of Korea and Japan over the issue of the comfort women but that this had not yet led to an apology from the Japanese government.

"What the comfort women would actually want is for Japan to say sorry," she said.

In their first joint statement, the coalition highlighted the connections between historical and modern sexual slavery. They expressed particular concerns that conflicts and natural disasters make people more vulnerable to sexual slavery.

"We express our serious concern of sexual violence of all persons in conflict zones and affected regions of natural disasters," said Co-chair Jasmine Lee. "Not excluding the continuing sexual violence against women and children in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and perpetrated by non-state actors such as ISIL and Boko Haram."

Members of the coalition said that they believe that teaching about history of sexual slavery in conflict has been neglected and that this in part contributes to sexual slavery continuing today.

According to Martin, the coalition has a broad mandate but also wants to focus on the historical issue of comfort women because it is a problem which has resonated across decades.

"It is something that has decades of resonating issues and we know there's more to be uncovered and studied carefully," she said.

However, the coalition did not restrict their calls for apologies for sexual violence during war to the comfort women.

"Countries and non-state actors shall be encouraged to officially apologize for historical and/or current sexual violence perpetrated by its armed forces," said Co-chair Melissa Lee, member of parliament in New Zealand. Lee said that in this spirit, the coalition was committed to building an international community free from sexual violence in all its forms and restoring the honour and dignity of victims. Enditem