Our book ‘Civil and Political Rights in Japan – A Tribute to Sir Nigel Rodley’ is out from Routledge.
The book project was initiated by myself, later edited by Saul.
The book is a tribute to Sir Nigel Rodley, or more appropriately, to Nigel. What I remember so clearly is Nigel at the time I made a presentation about my PhD research at the University of Essex – that was almost 10 years back now. By then Nigel was of course a world famous human rights giant, and this giant was the first one to be there, even before me, in the front row, to listen to what I had to say about individual criminal accountability of the United Nations Police personnel. There was no Sir Nigel Rodley in front of me, but a person who just cared about what was going on in the world. When he was charing the Human Rights Committee, he commented that Japan was following procedural obligations but many of the Committee’s recommendations go ignored – which was, ‘to put it mildly’, a waste of resource.
The book is intended to contribute to changing that.
My own chapters are on the use of force by law enforcement officials in Okinawa against protesters, and on discrimination against women in the sphere of marriage and family life.
I will have a module at my university – the University of Tokyo – based on this book in the upcoming semester.
aikiharahunt 