How has the UN Security Council debated and confronted wartime sexual violence against LGBTs? What are the prospects for it? The issue of violence and discrimination against LGBT people is one of the topics that has been at the forefront of major inter-power and inter-regional tension. Western countries, Latin American countries, and Israel are active in defending LGBT rights, while Russia, China, Arab countries, African countries, and many Asian countries take a passive or negative position in defending LGBT rights. The conflict between the two sides is also waged in the UN Security Council. The UN Security Council has developed a "Women, Peace, and Security" agenda, which does not target the defense of LGBT rights. However, an analysis of UN Security Council resolutions, presidential statements, and meeting records on the "Women, Peace, and Security" agenda shows that while the UN Security Council has been unable to take concerted action toward wartime sexual violence against LGBTs, the Council members belonging to the UN LGBTI Core Group have protection of LGBT people from wartime sexual violence. This will be seen in the following paragraphs. At present, states that are active in the UN Security Council on the protection of LGBTs from wartime sexual violence and those that are passive or negative on the issue are in close proximity, and it remains difficult to adopt a resolution or presidential statement with the support of many members of the Council.

Care is a central concept in conceiving a society that restores, nurtures, and share, instead of destroying, plundering, exploiting, and harming the world. If the reciprocal act of caring and being cared for is inevitable in our life, then the question of who provides care and what kind of relationship is established with the caregivers is important. Care is currently provided by increasing number of migrant women, who move to the Global North through the gendered international migration system established through complicity between the state and the market. This can be considered as a “structural violence” that produces unfree labor.

This paper focuses on migrant care workers working in Taiwan and Japan to identify their diverse vulnerabilities. I start by introducing the concepts of migration regime and care regime and discuss how migrant care workers are constructed differently at the intersection of different regimes. Then, I examine how the occupation of care, in addition to being a migrant, is associated with diverse vulnerabilities. Since care work involves excretion, it is avoided as disruptive to the social order, and care settings can be spaces filled with structural violence that intensively embody the disposal by global capitalism. On the other hand, however, countervailing movements for the recognition and empowerment of care workers, including migrant workers, through the establishment of international norms, access to citizenship, and the formation of multicultural care communities are underway.

I conclude that we cannot expect to be cared for by migrant workers unless the value of care work is recognized and rights are granted to migrant care workers. Caring for migrant workers is the first step toward making our society decent and humane.

This paper examines when a society and its people which are considered antimilitaristic embrace limitations on their fundamental rights. During the postwar era, Japan avoided enacting Emergency-related laws due to that it would evoke wartime adversity and the human rights abuses experienced by Japanese people. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the government tried to make a preparation for the situation in which war might break out in adjacent areas, but opposition parties and civil society harshly criticized such attempts. This had been called “an emergency taboo.”The laws, however, was easily passed by both the ruling and opposition party during 2003, and there did not seem to be any major opposition against them. In this paper, I suggest two major factors which affected the change in threat perception within Japanese society: the North Korea abduction issue and the media reports and TV programs covering that. The fact that Japanese people were abducted by North Korean spies was confirmed for the first time during the Japan–North Korea summit in September 2002. Many reports and TV programs embarked on dealing with the tragedy of Japanese victims emotionally.

The astonishing news and the media environment in Japan following the summit were a precondition to request novel means of addressing threats from North Korea, and the government and lawmakers, particularly conservatives, considered this situation a chance to enact Emergency-related laws for the protection of their people. Nevertheless, this Japanese perception did not resonate with a neighboring democratic country, South Korea, according to a poll taken in 2003. As well, the general election result-the opposition party gaining seats, suggested that Japanese antimilitarism did not collapse in the same year.

This paper discusses what is considered the logic that justifies the pursuit of criminal responsibility at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Ongwen, a former child soldier who was convicted by the pre-trial chamber of the ICC in 2021.

This paper first points out that the problem of the discussion about the evaluation of the child soldiers as “perpetrators and victims.” The background to the impunity of child soldiers under the age of 18 derived from the development of international norms designed to protect child soldiers who are forcibly mobilized for conflict. Regarding the Ongwen case, the pursuit of retributive justice through the ICC has been criticized due to the nature of child soldiers as “perpetrators and victims.” However, this paper argues that such criticism overlooks the differences among child soldiers. This paper states that child soldiers do not always have the character of "victim and perpetrator" equally, and it is necessary to consider an evaluation based on their statuses in the armed forces and their roles during combat operations, which differ from one individual to another.

This paper then discusses that the justification for holding former child soldiers accountable at the ICC is mediated by the doctrine of “duress” under the Article 31(d) of the Rome Statute. The paper argues that the validity of impunity based on Ongwen's “victim” status was negated by the fact that he was not in duress situation, but initiated the human rights violations, thus justifying the pursuit of criminal responsibility against him. This paper states that the Ongwen case indicates a way of evaluation for retributive justice that can still be pursued even if he had a past as a child soldier.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has finally come into force. It made us feel the continuing presence of the modern enlightenment project based on the Kantian practical reason. However, the attempt to achieve disarmament and peace among nations with the inner logic of morality and law has been harshly criticized for its detachment from the political reality. Is this criticism against “liberal legalism” applicable to TPNW as well? If that is the case, we have to ask a following question: besides enacting a treaty, what else is needed to achieve nuclear disarmament and abolition?

In order to address this question, (1) this article tries to understand the complicated relation between powerful nations and international law by critically examining the English school theory of international society. Based on this understanding, (2) the article demonstrates that, given the current anarchical structure of international society, TPNW cannot help facing a wide variety of theoretical and practical dilemmas. In an effort to find a way out of this aporia, (3) the article takes up an entirely new concept of “power” seen in the political and social theory of Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas and proposes the idea of “post sovereign constitutional pacifism” inspired by the preamble and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Finally, (4) the article shows that this new idea of pacifism can not only promote nuclear disarmament and abolition beyond the limits of English school, but help get over the aforementioned aporia afflicting TPNW.

This research note demonstrates how feminist therapy practices conducted by psychology experts can be considered a feminist peace movement. This research note introduces therapy practices conducted with a gender analysis to support victims of sexual assault or domestic violence (DV). Here, the definition of a feminist peace movement follows the concept of “War System,” put forward by Betty Reardon, that points out that war is a social system to maintain the social order by armed forces, and that sexism and militarism are interdependent to each other. Thus, eradication of sexism is important for achieving peace and demilitarization, and activities addressing this issue can be understood as a feminist peace movement.

In the Japanese society including the judicial system, persisting sexism has influenced procedures and outcomes of legal efforts seeking justice for victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. Victims’ views are often undermined, and perpetrators often escape criminal responsibilities. Feminist therapists intervene to advocate the victims in such cases.

This paper looks at four examples of the advocacy activities for court cases of Women’s Counseling Kyoto, a feminist therapy group. Three of these cases are the written expert’s opinion and in court testimony each using the concept of Narrative Approach, Prolonging Sexual Violence, and Pandering Response to Perpetrator. The last case demonstrates the importance of support network of the victim of domestic violence.

In the conclusion, the paper suggests that these advocacy practices by feminist psychology experts shed light on the conceptualization of peace and security from a feminist perspective and can further develop and deepen feminist concepts of peace and security.