Understanding Sexual Violence in Conflict: Regional Views of the Comfort Women Legacy

Filed Under: China, Events, Human Rights, Japan, Northeast Asia, Social Issues, South Korea, Events

Featuring:

Shu-Hua Kang | Executive Director, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation

Mina Watanabe | Secretary General, Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace

 Bonnie Oh| (Moderating) Distinguished Prof of Korean Studies (Retired)
Georgetown University

Thursday, March 12

10:00AM – 12:00 PM
Rome Auditorium
1619 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036

 

Please join the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS and Asia Policy Point in commemorating International Women’s Day this month with a discussion by two spokeswomen for the survivors of sexual slavery.  Ms. Mina Watanabe and Ms. Shu-Hua Kang have devoted their careers to the care of and advocacy for victims of sexual violence and trafficking in Asia, and will be in Washington after presenting at the 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York.

 

Shu-Hua KANG is Executive Director of the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF). TWRF was established in 1987 by a group of lawyers, scholars, and social workers to fight on the behalf of girls illegally forced into prostitution. In her 9 years at TWRF, she has devoted herself to promoting awareness about institutionalized sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII (“comfort women”), as well as to the prevention of gender violence in Taiwan. She is the executive producer of Song of the Reed, a documentary depicting the stories of Taiwanese “comfort women” survivors, as well as the chief editor of the book The Reason to be Strong, which shares the recovery processes of these survivors. She is currently leading a team in preparing for a women’s rights museum in the memory of Taiwanese “comfort women.”  http://www.twrf.org.tw/

 

Mina WATANABE is Secretary General of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) based in Tokyo, which focuses on violence against women in conflict situations including military sexual slavery during the Second World War (the “comfort women”). Founded in 2005, WAM was a recipient of the Catholic Pax Christi’s International Peace Award in 2007. She has worked in women’s NGOs and parliamentarians’ offices with a focus on women’s rights, and was actively involved in The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal for the Trial of Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery held in Tokyo in 2000.  http://wampeace.org/en/

 

This event will be webcast HERE.