Rethinking Japan’s refugee and asylum policy
19 January 2021
Author: Hirotaka Fujibayashi, Graduate Institute, Geneva
In 2020, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, under the UN Commission on Human Rights, levelled criticism against Japan’s asylum system. The Working Group’s Opinion was primarily adopted to urge the Japanese government to review its inhuman treatment of long-term detainees, the vast majority of which are seeking asylum. The Opinion also touched on a more fundamental issue: Japan’s strict refugee screening system.
Throughout former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, immigration was an important political issue. Political debates on immigration a traditionally taboo topic in Japanese politics flourished. Abe’s aim of increasing ‘semi-skilled’ foreign workers, not ‘immigrants’, led to the 2018 reform of Japan’s national immigration law, the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (ICRRA). A series of politic