Perspectives, ideas, insights and engagement filled the room as representatives from IDSN’s member organisations and international associates from across the globe gathered for a two-day general assembly meeting in Geneva on 24-25 November, 2023.
IDSN and the UN OHCHR Minority section brought together an experts’ round table discussion to mark the 30th Anniversary of the UN Minority mandate.
Need and objectives for EU intervention on sustainable corporate governance
As part of the Minority Stories initiative, Minority Rights Group have published an eight chapter story on Japan’s minorities with a strong focus on caste discrimination and the Buraku in Japan. The story has been created in collaboration with the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), and we strongly recommend diving into this great new resource
In its statement for the pre-session of the UN Universal Periodic Review of Japan the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) highlights the violation of the right to privacy for the Buraku people, who suffer caste-based discrimination.
Voice, Silence, and Self examines how the mechanisms of silence surrounding burakumin issues are reproduced and challenged in Japanese society. It explores the ways in which schools and social relationships shape people’s identity as burakumin within a “protective cocoon” where risk is minimized. Based on extensive ethnographic research and interviews, this longitudinal work explores the experience of burakumin youth from two different communities and with different social movement organizations.
Joseph D. Hankins‘s marvelous new ethnography of the contemporary Buraku people looks at the labor involved in “identifying, dismantling, and reproducing” the Buraku situation in Japan and beyond.
Hundreds of Buraku households in Japan have received hate mail containing abusive and discriminatory messages. An article in The Independent newspaper highlights the plight of the estimated three million Burakumin who continue to be subjected to caste-based discrimination. A Buraku leader notes that there is no legislation that makes this type of discrimination illegal.
Japan has a reputation of being a homogeneous, mostly harmonious society. There are few foreigners, linguistic differences are rare and on the surface class distinctions are largely absent. But, as Mike Sunda discovered, there is one, often hidden, exception: Japan's untouchables.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recommends that Japan effectively apply its legislation to protect the Buraku people and provide information and indicators on concrete measures to uplift their living conditions and position in society.
The Human Rights Committee, monitoring the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), review of Japan raised concern for discrimination against the Buraku* people in Japan, with particular attention paid to Buraku women.
From the International Consultation on Caste-Based Discrimination · 29 November – 1 December 2011 · Kathmandu · Nepal. Good practices and strategies to eliminate caste discrimination by governments, civil society, national & international institutions and agencies