On August 10, 2015, the Executive Committee of Academic Council on the UN System and its Board of Directors unanimously decided to establish its Liaison Office and to appoint Professor Hasegawa as the first ACUNS Liaison Officer in Tokyo. Prior to this appointment, Hasegawa chaired an ACUNS session at the Hague Institute of Global Justice in the Netherlands on June 11.
On 7 July, Mr. Yasushi Akashi, Vice President of the UN Association of Japan spoke for one hour to a group of ‘best and brightest’ students who will participate in the JCK youth forum symposium to be held in Gyeongju, South Korea in September 2015.
At a seminar held on 23 June 2015 at the University of Tokyo, Professor Hasegawa identified leadership traits that proved decisive in preventing Timor-Leste from relapsing into intractable conflict and civil war in 2006. Please click here for his presentation.
According to Junya Nakano, Director for Climate Change of MOFA, Japan will call for a new framework to be adopted by COP21 in Paris that will bind all the developed and developing countries together. Please click here for a detailed note written by Rise Katsuda on Nakano’s explanation given on July 4, 2015.
On July 4th, 2015 at a seminar held in Tokyo, Professor Masako Yonekawa of Rikkyo University made a detailed briefing about the political factors that impacted humanitarian assistance as she spoke to Japanese students who are participating in the JCK youth forum in Korea in September 2015.
Please click here for the content of the presentations made at the JCK seminar and the statements issued by Japanese political leaders, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996 and other Prime Ministers in subsequent years.
At an international symposium organized by the Academic Council on UN System (ACUNS) on East Asian contributions to UN peace operations held in Geneva on 15th June 2015, former SRSG Professor Sukehiro Hasegawa informed the participants about the past, present and future of Japan’s contributions to UN peace operations. Please click here for the full text.
Mr. Shigeki Takizaki, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan made an informative presentation on territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Both island and maritime claims are made by several states including the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Their disputes concern in particular both the Spratly and the Paracel islands. The interests of different nations include securing fishing areas around the archipelagos; the potential exploitation of crude oil and natural gas under the waters of various parts of the South China Sea.
Chairman of the High Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations, former President José Ramos-Horta was welcomed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on 19 June 2015.