'Comfort women' could set precedent

Recognizing the historic harm caused to "comfort women" in World War II could help provide a precedent to understand and address modern-day equivalent issues, a newly formed international coalition of parliamentarians against sexual slavery said on Monday.

"The resolution of the Japanese military's comfort-women issue will serve as a model for addressing the issue of girls' and women's wartime human rights for future generations," said Canadian Senator Yonah Martin, a co-chair of the coalition.

Martin made the statement as she was speaking at the launch of the International Parliamentary Coalition for Victims of Sexual Slavery. The coalition has founding members from Canada, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea, and hopes to expand to include members from a broad range of countries.

It is estimated that 200,000 women from Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, yet after more than 70 years; the Japanese government has yet to apologize.

Jasmine Lee, the co-chair of the coalition and a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, said that there were ongoing meetings between the Republic of Korea and Japan over the issue of the comfort women, but that these had not yet led to an apology from the Japanese government.

"What the comfort women would actually want is for Japan to say 'sorry'," she said.

In their first joint statement, the coalition highlighted the connections between historical and modern sexual slavery. They expressed particular concerns that conflicts and natural disasters make people more vulnerable to sexual slavery.

"We express our serious concern of sexual violence of all persons in conflict zones and affected regions of natural disasters," said co-chair Jasmine Lee.

"Not excluding the continuing sexual violence against women and children in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo; and perpetrated by nonstate actors such as Islamic State and Boko Haram."

Members of the coalition said that they believe that teaching about history of sexual slavery in conflict has been neglected and that this in part contributes to sexual slavery continuing today.