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Date and Time: Feb 27th, 2024, 7:00pm to 9:30/45pm EST

Location: Columbia University, Jerome Greene Hall: Rm 104, and Zoom (link will be emailed to you)

Organizer: Columbia Society of International Law (CSIL)

Co-Sponsors: Center for Korean Legal Studies (CKLS), Society for Korean Legal Studies (SKLS), Empowering Women of Color (EWOC), Columbia Law Women's Association (CLWA), Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA), The Parker School, Korean American Lawyers Association of Greater New York (KALAGNY), Society for Chinese Law (SCL), Domestic Violence Project (DVP)

Background: In 2023, 6 more comfort women survivors from Taiwan, Mainland China, the Philippines, and South Korea left us. On a significant legal front, the UN issued a groundbreaking CEDAW ruling early in the year, holding the Filipino government accountable for its discrimination and neglect of Filipina comfort women. Later in 2023, the Seoul High Court made a historic decision, supporting a comfort women claim for compensation against Japan, marking a reversal of a previous ruling that had upheld Japan's state immunity under international law. Despite these unprecedented developments, the reality is that the number of survivors is dwindling. In order to ensure that these women did not suffer in vain it is time to discuss their legacy - what are the lessons that we have learned and, in the future, should learn in regards to rape and sexual violence during conflicts?

Two-fold Objective: Firstly, to raise awareness and increase understanding of recent 2023 developments. Secondly, to celebrate the positive contributions that the comfort women movement has made towards advancing women's rights in international law, and to point out areas for improvement.

SPEAKER LINE UP:

Introductory remarks from Columbia Law School (In person): Dean Gillian Lester is the 15th Dean of Columbia Law School. She joined Columbia Law School on January 1, 2015, as Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law. Previously, Lester was acting dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law where she had been a professor since 2006.

PART 1: Origins of Comfort Women and Historical Controversies (7:05pm to 7:25pm)

Speaker 1 - Opening remarks about comfort women (Zoom): The Hon. Judge Lillian Sing (retired) is the first Asian American woman judge in Northern California. She retired in September, 2015 to fight for justice for the “Comfort Women” after dispensing justice in the courtroom of the San Francisco Superior Court for over 3 decades. She was presented with the Joe Morozumi Award by the Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area for Exceptional Legal Advocacy. At the 50 Anniversary of Chinese For Affirmative Action (CAA), she was honored as one of the five Founding Member of CAA, an organization that was established to defend and promote the civil rights of Chinese Americans and other racial minorities in order to build a multi- racial diverse democracy in the US. Presently Judge Sing is the Co-chair of “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition (CWJC) which built SF “Comfort Women” Memorial.

Speaker 2 (In-person): Prof. Alexis Dudden, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, specializes in Japan and Northeast Asia. Her notable books include "Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea, and the United States" (Columbia, 2008) and "Japan’s Colonization of Korea" (Hawaii, 2005). She earned her BA from Columbia University in 1991 and her PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1998. Dudden has received prestigious awards and fellowships from Fulbright, ACLS, NEH, and SSRC, with stints at Princeton and Harvard. She was honored with the 2015 Manhae Peace Prize. Currently, she's working on a book for Oxford University Press titled "The Opening and Closing of Japan, 1850-2020" and serves as an advisory council member of Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies’ Research Project on Constitutional Revision.

PART 2: Accountability Challenges and the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal (7:25pm to 7:35pm)

Speaker 3 (In-person): Ms. Indai Sajor is a feminist activist known for convening the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery in 2000, a landmark initiative recognizing sexual slavery as a crime against humanity. Over thirty years of experience includes coordinating the comfort women movement for justice across ten countries, working with international organizations and the UN in conflict zones like Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, and Sudan/Darfur. She was a visiting professor at the UN University of Peace in Costa Rica, teaching Gender and Peacebuilding for six years, and was part of the team that set up the Gender and Peacebuilding Master’s Program. She is a Rockefeller Fellow on Human Security at the City University of New York Graduate School. She is also the recipient of the Dame Nita Barrow award from the University of Toronto and the Gender Justice Award by Women’s Initiative for Gender Justice to the ICC. Currently, she is writing a book on the Tribunal's history and developing a website to host its documents and videos, aiming to publish its judgment.

PART 3: Litigation Efforts Around the World and Impact of Comfort Women (7:35pm to 8:40pm)

IN SOUTH KOREA:

Speaker 4 (Zoom): Prof. Na-Young Lee, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang University (Seoul,Korea) and Chair of the Board at the Korean Council for the Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Her research interests include postcolonialism, gendered nationalism, sexuality, and trans/national women’s movements. Her recent international publications include “Multiple Encounters and Reconstructed Identities: Halmoni Activist-Survivors of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery as Postcolonial Subjects” (2022); “Challenging the Global Human Rights Regime: Transnational Significance of the & “Comfort Women”; Redress Movement” (2021); and“Un/forgettable Histories of US Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Women’s Experiences of Sexual labor and Government Policies” (2017).

VIDEO MESSAGE FROM SOUTH KOREAN SURVIVOR YONG-SO LEE

IN THE PHILIPPINES:

Speaker 5 (Zoom): Ms. Sharon Cabusao-Silva is the current Coordinator for Lila Pilipina Center for Justice and Remembrance.  She is a long time women's rights activist, having worked with GABRIELA, the National Alliance of Filipino Women in various capacities. She is currently a National Council member of the alliance.  She is also involved with the peace and human rights movements in the country. In 2017, she spoke before the Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council on the state of women's rights under the Rodrigo Duterte administration. In 2023, she served as a panelist in an international webinar on women, war and militarism organized by Lila Pilipina and the Geneva Graduate Studies Center.  

VIDEO MESSAGE FROM A FILIPINA SURVIVOR

Speaker 6 (Zoom): Prof. Diane Desierto is the Professor of Law and Global Affairs Faculty Director, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law, at the University of Notre Dame. She served as co-counsel in the landmark UN CEDAW 2023 ruling for Filipina 'comfort women. She teaches, publishes, and practices in the areas of international law and human rights, international economic law and development, international arbitration, maritime security, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Law, and comparative public law. She holds JSD and LLM degrees from Yale Law School, as well as JD cum laude class salutatorian and BSc Economics summa cum laude class valedictorian degrees from the University of the Philippines. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Klau Institute for Civil Human Rights, Kellogg Institute of International Studies, Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, Pulte Institute for Global Development, and Nanovic Institute of European Studies. She is also Co-Principal Investigator of the Notre Dame Reparations Design and Compliance Lab.

IN TAIWAN:

Speaker 7 (Zoom): Dr. Thomas J. Ward is a Professor of Peace and Development Studies and Chair of the Graduate Program in Peace Studies at HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership in New York City. Formerly, he served as Dean of the College of Public and International Affairs at the University of Bridgeport from 2000 to 2018, earning the title of Distinguished Dean Emeritus in 2019. He has received a Fulbright scholarship (France) and a Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Visiting Research Fellowship, and has lectured at the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Co-author of "Park Statue Politics: World War II Comfort Women Memorials in the United States" (2019), his writings on comfort women-related issues have been featured in various publications. Dr. Ward holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, a Diplôme Supérieur from the University of Paris-Sorbonne IV, and Master's degrees from HJ International Graduate School and California State University. He pursued doctoral studies at the Catholic Institute of Paris and De La Salle University in the Philippines.

IN INDONESIA:

Speaker 8 (Zoom): Prof. Katherine McGregor is a historian and Deputy Associate Dean International (Indonesia) for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include Indonesian historiography, memories of violence, the Indonesian military, Islam and identity in Indonesia and historical international links between Indonesia and the world. She teaches in the areas of Southeast Asian history, the history of violence and Asian thematic history. As an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, she published a monograph Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory and Sexual Violence in Indonesia (August 2023), which focuses on the struggle for justice for Indonesian survivors of the system of enforced military prostitution used by the Japanese military during their occupation/colonisation of Indonesia from 1942-1945. She served as President of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (2021-2022) and Vice President (2019-2020).


PART 4: Legacy, Commemoration Politics and the Eternal Testimony of Comfort Women AI Project (8:40 pm to 9:00pm)

Speaker 9 (Zoom): Prof. Peipei Qiu, is the Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair Professor of Chinese and Japanese, has served as Advisor to Class of 2021 and Chair of the Department of Chinese and Japanese. Renowned for her groundbreaking book "Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves," she now consults on the Eternal Testimony of Chinese 'Comfort Women' AI project. Prof. Qiu earned her BA and MA from Peking University and M.Phil. and PhD from Columbia University. Specializing in Japanese literature, she teaches various courses in Japanese and Chinese literature, Asian Studies, and Women's Studies. Her research spans Japanese poetry, comparative studies of Japanese and Chinese literature, Daoist tradition in East Asian literature, women in East Asian literature and societies, and Japanese language pedagogy.

Speaker 10 (Zoom): Prof. Edward Vickers holds the UNESCO Chair in Education for Peace, Social Justice and Global Citizenship at Kyushu University in Japan, and is President of the Comparative Education Society of Asia. He researches the history and politics of education in contemporary Asia, especially in Chinese societies (the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan). He also researches the politics of conflict-related heritage in East Asia. His books include Education and Society in Post-Mao China (2017; with Zeng Xiaodong), Constructing Modern Asian Citizenship (2015; with Krishna Kumar), and Remembering Asia's World War Two (2019; with Mark Frost and Daniel Schumacher). With Mark Frost, he edited a 2021 special issue of Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus on 'The "Comfort Women" as Public History'.

PART 5: Open Floor Questions (9:00pm to 9:30/45pm)Asian Pacific American Law Students