[JURIST] A UN rights official said Wednesday that immigrant workers entering Japan through government-run training programs face widespread racism and discrimination, urging the country to increase immigrant protections. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants Jorge Bustamante interviewed immigrants, civil servants, and academics in the country during an investigation that uncovered ongoing social and work-related discrimination against non-Japanese workers. The government-created Japan International Training Cooperation Organization (JITCO), which supervises multiple training programs, has brought in more than 400,000 unskilled workers from 15 developing nations to train the workers so they can return to their countries with work-related skills. Yet many of the migrants, who are mostly Asian, enter Japan and face exploitation in wages, health care, working conditions and child care. Opponents of the training programs urge the Japanese government to sign the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and to create laws to protect the human rights of immigrants in Japan. Bustamante will submit a report of his findings to the UN Human Rights Council later this year.
Japan’s human rights record received international attention earlier this year when ambassadors from eight countries met with Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada to urge Japan to sign an international treaty that would help prevent parental child abductions across borders. Japan is the only G-7 country that has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which requires a country to return a child who has been “wrongfully removed” from his or her country of habitual residence. According to human rights groups, nearly 160,000 divorced or separated foreign and Japanese parents in Japan are not allowed to see their children under the current child custody laws.