Japan again withholds annual funding to UNESCO Memory of the World

Posted on : 2017-05-08 16:12 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
By withholding funding, Japan trying to block inclusion of materials related to comfort women
Former comfort woman Lim Ok-seon speaks at a press conference appealing for fundraising for the UNESCO registration of comfort women archival materials
Former comfort woman Lim Ok-seon speaks at a press conference appealing for fundraising for the UNESCO registration of comfort women archival materials

The Japanese government has once again delayed paying its share of UNESCO funding in an effort to prevent records related to the comfort women from being registered with UNESCO’s Memory of the World.

Tokyo has decided to temporarily suspend the payment of 3.48 billion yen (US$30.84 million) in funding that it owes UNESCO this year while it observes the organization’s review of comfort women records that civic groups from South Korea, China and Japan want to be added to the Memory of the World, Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported on May 7. Japan is attempting to use its funding as a tool to block the registration of the comfort women records on UNESCO’s Memory of the World.

In 2016, the Japanese government withheld about 3.85 billion yen in funding to the organization until the end of the year. Before that, Japan paid its UNESCO funding each spring. The reason Japan delayed paying its UNESCO funding last year was because the Chinese government had successfully requested the registration of Nanjing Massacre records to the Memory of the World in 2015 and civic groups from South Korea, China and Japan had requested the registration of the comfort women records the following year. Japan’s use of its funding as leverage to block these requests also faced criticism inside Japan. “It’s shameful that Japan is withholding its funding in an attempt to get its own way,” said Koichiro Matsuura, former director-general of UNESCO, during an interview with the Asahi Shimbun.

The largest share of UNESCO’s budget is paid by the US (22%), followed by Japan (9.6%), China (7.9%) and Germany (6.3%). But the US has been withholding its funding since in 2011, when Palestine was admitted to UNESCO, making Japan UNESCO’s largest donor at the moment. After UNESCO received a number of applications for records that accuse Japan of past crimes, Japan has accused South Korea and China of exploiting the Memory of the World system for political ends and has pressured UNESCO to make institutional reforms to allow related countries to express their views in the review process. UNESCO is also attempting to implement institutional changes. On May 4, the UNESCO executive committee adopted an interim report that recommends changing the advisory committee system to have disagreements that arise during the registration process be addressed through preliminary deliberations between the related countries.

After reviewing the interim report, the executive committee will decide on May 10 whether to officially adopt it. The interim report states that the opinions of related countries should be used as the basis for determining whether or not to add records to the Memory of the World, calls for compromise between related countries in the case of disagreement and mandates a deliberation process that could last up to four years when compromise cannot be reached. The report accommodates Japan’s arguments to some extent, and Tokyo is planning to ask UNESCO to immediately implement it, the Sankei Shimbun reported.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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