On Jan. 27, Japan's Foreign Ministry said it informed the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights not to allocate any of Japan's voluntary funds to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (the CEDAW Committee). The request followed the committee's recommendation in 2024 that Japan should revise the country's Imperial House Law, which stipulates that only men can be successors to Japan's throne. The government had protested the committee's recommendation, urging it to delete it from its report.
"The right to succeed the Imperial Throne is not included among basic human rights ... therefore, it does not constitute as discrimination against women," said ministry spokesperson Toshihiro Kitamura. While none of Japan's contributions to the U.N. human rights office -- about 20 million to 30 million yen ($134,000 to $201,000) annually -- have gone to the CEDAW Committee since 2005, Kitamura said the halt will make "Japan's position clearer." The Japanese government also cancelled the planned visit by representatives of the committee to Japan later this year, Kitamura said.
The CEDAW Committee is an independent U.N. body tasked with reviewing the implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, an international treaty that protects the rights of women and girls. It consists of 23 experts elected by member states who serve four-year terms in their individual expert capacity, not as representatives of their country. The Committee systematically reviews adherence to the treaty by all countries that are a party to it, including Japan, and makes recommendations to improve the protection of women's and girls' rights.
The CEDAW Committee has previously made recommendations to reform long-standing and deeply embedded discriminatory practices in many countries. For example, in 2009 it called on Spain to complete the constitutional reform necessary to guarantee equality before the law for women and men in the succession to the Spanish crown. The committee has also called on Saudi Arabia and other countries to abolish discriminatory male guardianship systems.
While the Japanese government insists its actions against the Committee were largely symbolic, they risk emboldening other governments to lash out against the U.N. human rights system at a time when powerful states are already undermining its effectiveness.
Human Rights Watch has documented the Chinese government's increasing efforts in recent years to weaken international human rights institutions by watering down U.N. resolutions on civil society and investigations of rights violations. China alongside Russia has also sought to defund these institutions. China's evident goal has been to deflect criticisms of its own grave rights violations, including crimes against humanity against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and those by its allies. China's approach also subverts the U.N.'s mandate from one of protecting everyone's dignity to one more in tune with individual state prerogatives.
A new risk to the U.N. human rights system is coming from the U.S., which makes Japan's support even more important. The administration of President Donald Trump has suspended most foreign aid and ordered a review of U.S. membership in all international organizations, as well as the withdrawal of U.S. participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council. As U.S. funding is a large proportion of the U.N. budget, even though it has been in arrears, it has been essential to keep U.N. human rights bodies operating, including the CEDAW Committee, that monitor state compliance with human rights treaties.
The CEDAW Committee and other independent U.N. human rights bodies need to be able to carry out their work without interference or reprisal from states. A threat to restrict funding in retaliation for a recommendation that a state does not agree with undermines the independence of such bodies, particularly in the context of a long-running "liquidity crisis" at the U.N.
While countries often earmark their voluntary funding to specific U.N. bodies, publicly blacklisting a specific human rights body from receiving state funding, explicitly in response to a recommendation the state does not like, opens the door for other states to punish human rights bodies for unfavorable interpretations of the law by blocking funding.
Decades of progress in developing and monitoring human rights treaties have helped advance the rights of people around the world, including by promoting gender and racial equality, the right to free expression and the right to live without fear of arbitrary imprisonment or torture.
This is a critical moment for the Japanese government to step up and support the U.N. human rights system instead of undermining it. Japan and all other countries should support the important work of the U.N. human rights bodies even if they do not always agree with their recommendations.