On 29 September, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced the completion of Japan’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. The Government of Japan launched its first NAP on September 29, 2015. The NAP was created to establish a framework, strategies, and actions for coordinated implementation of UNSCR 1325. It aims at responding to participation; conflict prevention; protection; humanitarian and reconstruction assistance. The development of the NAP was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordination with civil society, NGOs and experts, including Zainab Hawa Bangura, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
After World War II, Japan has not been involved in large-scale conflict or war. However, it continues to have tension with North Korea over the latter’s nuclear programme and with China and South Korea over disputed territory and Japan’s past wartime actions, including colonialism and the abuse of “comfort women”, who were subjected to sexual slavery. Japan has developed a NAP that has both an internal and an external perspective and is aimed at reviewing from a gender perspective, the Japanese government’s policies and initiatives concerning assistance in the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding, including participation in UN Peacekeeping Operations and women’s empowerment. Japan is the second main provider of assessed contributions to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in the 2013 – 2015 period. Examples for this are peacekeeping operations in Timor-Leste providing engineering contingent to UNMISET; self-defence forces personnel (election observers, military observers and headquarters staff) to the UN missions in the DRC, Nepal and Sudan; and self-defence force engineers to the UN mission in South Sudan.
At the 23 April 2019 high-level WPS Commitments event, Japan committed to creating a new NAP in advance of October 2020.