SDHF Newsletter No.221 Report to Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination 6

NGO Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
NGO Report in relation to the tenth to eleventh periodic reports of Japan
Series No. 6: 5. Political Right and Local Suffrage for Foreign Residents

Submitted by the Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination

August 16, 2018

The fifth report of the Japan NGO Coalition is “5. Political right and Local Suffrage for Foreign Residents.”
The NGO report urges:
(a) Not giving local suffrage to foreign residents is not a breach of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), because Article 1-2 of ICERD stipulates: “The Convention shall not apply to distinctions, restrictions or preference made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.” The relationship between Japanese nationals and foreign residents is equivalent to the one between citizens and non-citizens. Therefore, this is not “discrimination”.
(b) In Japan, any person is eligible to acquire Japanese nationality, regardless of race, color, genealogy or racial or ethnic origin. There is no discrimination with regard to the acquisition of nationality.
(c) In Japan, as soon as a person acquires nationality, that person receives all political rights. The Japanese system is one of the most advanced and impartial systems in the world.

5. Political Right and Local Suffrage for Foreign Residents:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1222/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/2018-08-CERD96_Japan_JNCRD-6.pdf

Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact