Kizuna Child-Parent Reunion

 

 

 

 

 

Summary of Meeting on November 24, 2012

Kizuna Child-Parent Reunion held a general meeting on Saturday November 24, 2012 from 3:00 - 5:00 pm in Yaesu, Tokyo. www.kizuna-cpr.org
Here is a summary below.

Thanks to all who attended for your earnest support. There were nine attendees in person, four
watching from overseas via Ustream representing three countries, and our directorship.
This is a nice increase from our first meeting on August 25 where there were three members in addition
to the directorship. Your names are listed below in alphabetical order by family name. The feedback
has generally been positive.

The attendees were
Chairman
John Gomez

Deputy Chairman
Bruce Gherbetti
Aki Hirata

members (9) - Japanese (5) and foreigners (4)
Mike DeJong
Matthew Edmond
Clive France
Yasuo Kumagiri
Kentaro Mashito
Takayuki Nomura
Eiichiro Okutsu
Henry Seals
Keiko Ukai

Overseas members watching via Ustream (4) were
Juan Jose Eslava Cabanellas (Pamplona, Spain)
Blanche Knight (Toowoomba, Australia)
Jeffrey Morehouse (Washington state, USA)
Brian Prager (New York City, USA)

Kizuna CPR intends to take a constructive and analytical approach toward working on the issue of
parental child abduction. We need to assess what is needed to overcome the obstacles.
One process to consider is relate-educate-demonstrate (show the ideas positively in action, not
necessarily public protests which may bring antagonism and argument)-petition-legislate.
We need to build committed teams of people to work on various aspects of the issue. There is a
bottleneck of limited human resources now. We need to increase the number of active people.
Team leaders are needed to assist our efforts.
We need more activity.

Project area teams
1) People networking and communications team - gather new supporters and maintain regular
communication with them via social media technology and regular news bulletins describing
developments, plans and goals
2) Fund raising team - funds are needed to compensate people to work on the issue
3) Event planning team - organizing and preparing events is time and labor intensive work
4) Psychological expert team - write a position paper, translate and deliver
5) Legal expert team - write a position paper, translate and deliver
6) Translation team - translate articles and documents in both language directions. The language barrier
must be overcome. Pressure cannot be applied by officials to other officials if they cannot understand
documents written in foreign languages.

There needs to be a social transformation along with a legal one.
Kizuna CPR will partner with Japanese groups and organizations to support their activities in raising
awareness within Japan about the issue and will make use of a diplomatic and governmental network of
contacts to apply multilateral diplomatic pressure.

Events
December 9 - Yoyogi bandshell concert and street walk to Shibuya
https://www.facebook.com/events/361880463903458/

December 29 - Kimidori Ribbon event at Gifu
http://kimidori-ribbon.org/

January 14, 2013 - awareness raising on Seijin no hi Coming of Age Day at celebration locations in
ward and city locations

There are some press and media opportunities developing that will generate more public awareness.

Spring 2013 positively themed multicultural, family oriented event, music, arts and crafts, activities for
children

March/April 2013 seminar that is similar to the one held last April where there were many participants
(70) and several Embassies represented (5). Next time it will be improved compared to last time.

June 13, 14, 2013 G8 Summit London - the goal is to push for having Japan accede to the Hague
Convention by putting it on the G8 summit making use of the contacts and building upon the activity
that have been established. In addition, we will coordinate worldwide simultaneous demonstrations
occurring at the time of the summit.

We need to prepare well in advance of these dates to have effective activity that is well executed. We
need your support and participation including those members in countries around the world.
We met former British Ambassador Sir David Warren and talked about the Hague Convention then met
British Vice Consul Carl Frater.
The relationship with the British government is critical because the host country sets the agenda of the
G8 Summit.

We received an e-mail from Assistant Secretary Campbell the day before the ASEAN Summit in
response to our request to have the President raise the issue in his top-level bilateral meeting with
Prime Minister Noda. We also have good contacts with the US Embassy and other State Department
officials as well as with officials from Australia, Canada, the EU delegation, France, Spain, and the
UK.

We have a good relationship with Mr. Yasuyuki Watanabe who is a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
He spoke out on the issue on October 23 in a Diet Study session.
An AERA article was published about him at that time.
The English translation can be found on http://kizuna-cpr.org/news/aera_english_translation

We discussed the issue with Ms. Ogata. Ms. Sadako Ogata was the former UN High Commissioner for
Refugees from 1990 to 2000 and has had a distinguished career in the UN. I have known her son for 33
years. (JG)

The UN Periodic Review identified Japan's need to accede to the Hague Convention. With this, we can
ask Human Rights groups to support us. One is Amnesty International, which is headquartered in
London with a branch office in Tokyo. The Japanese government needs to respond to the report by
March 2013 submitting it to Geneva.

Q&A
Brian Prager mentioned his research on psychological and sociological issues.

There was a review of the statistics of loss of access in Japan after divorce in response to a question by
Matthew Edmund.

4.6 million divorces 1992 - 2010, one child per divorce on average, 58% loss of access according to
NHK Close Up Gendai yields an estimated 2.7 million children in Japan who have lost their
relationship with their parent during this time, which is a human rights violation. It is about 150,000
children per year. Statistics available upon request.

Clive France noted that this is a huge disparity between the number of those affected and the number
who are actively working and supporting the efforts to recover their children.
This disparity needs to be overcome.

Sincerely,
Directorship of Kizuna Child-Parent Reunion
www.kizuna-cpr.org