By You Soo-sun



The United Nations human rights agency called on Japan to acknowledge the country's violation of the human rights of "comfort women," or wartime sex slaves, and to implement its recommendations, according to the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun, Saturday.



The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) also requested Japan to take legal responsibility and punish responsible individuals for the issue, estimated to have involved 80,000 to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and other parts of Asia.



The report came a couple of days after the UNESCO International Advisory Committee reportedly deferred its decision on the listing of the comfort women archives on its Memory of the World Register, established to preserve documentary heritages throughout the world. Many Koreans suspect the decision was influenced by the Japanese government, a major donor for the program.



The OHCHR report will be submitted for a United Nations review on the Japanese human rights situation slated for next month in Geneva, Switzerland. The United Nations will make recommendations based on the report to the Japanese government by the end of next month.



The recommendations are not legally binding, but the international community may use them as grounds to criticize Japan, the right-wing news outlet reported.



In the report, the OHCHR defined the comfort women issue as a practice of sexual slavery. It requested Japan to own up to it and take legal and administrative steps to provide relief and compensation. And the victims, it asserted, should be at the center of this process.



The OHCHR also expressed concerns regarding the Japanese government's control over internal debate on the issue. The matter, for example, was omitted from its middle school textbooks, which it said, was an "infringement on the citizens right to know."











