To Genuine Reconciliation on Comfort Women

Citation:

Zhewei, Li. 2019. "To Genuine Reconciliation on Comfort Women." International Journal of Rule of Law, Transitional Justice and Human Rights, no. 10, 91-102.

Author: Li Zhewei

Abstract:

The comfort women, which was a brutal crime in the Second World War, has been a historical dilemma in the international legal practice in the East Asia. It is an impasse made up of gender, decolonisation and nationalism elements. This article tries to propose a possible way to reach a genuine reconciliation on the comfort women issue from a perspective of transitional justice. Firstly, an introduction about the comfort women issue will be introduced, which will establish the whole theoretical analysis framework. The Second Part will try to analyze the obstacles and difficulties to ultimately settle down the comfort women dilemma. In the Third Part, this essay will conduct cases study by retrospecting the currently existing practice that has tried to address the comfort women problem, namely inter-governmental cases and individual-claim cases. The Conclusion will coincide the rationale of the First Part and put forward the possible solution with a threefold structure.

Keywords: comfort women issue, transitional justice, gender-based crimes, international law

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, International Law, Justice, Transitional Justice, Nationalism, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery Regions: Asia, East Asia

Year: 2019