Mark Ramseyerβhave characterized these women and girls as prostitutes who voluntarily joined brothels, denying the brutal reality of their enslavement. In light of these investigations, the legal status of comfort women has become a matter of contention. The Japanese government, now officially acknowledging that these women were victims of sexual slavery, denies legal liability for the war crimes committed against them and claims it has no legal obligation to survivors.
Japan in Sovereign immunity, as invoked by the Japanese government, is a principle in international law wherein a sovereign state cannot be sued in the courts of another sovereign state without its consent. The question of sovereign immunity preceded βand was separate fromβthe assessment of the crime itself.
Nevertheless, Japan is not the only party considering filing suit in the ICJ. However, this resolution may not come at all. Korea has expressed its openness to this compromise, in order for both countries to avoid mounting a costly legal challenge.
In both of these scenarios, Japan will almost certainly pay no compensation to the twelve plaintiffs of Hee Nam Yoo. More troublingly, it serves as a reminder of how inaction from international legal bodies may set a dangerous legal precedent for similar cases in the future. Survivors then turned to the Japanese state to seek accountability, suing the Japanese government for compensation during the s in Japanese courts.
These, too, were rejected: the courts ruled that under international law, individual could not sue for compensation from a state. These implementations of international law dismiss any chance for these women to seek legal accountability. They could not seek it from the Japanese nationals who were responsible, nor could they seek it from the Japanese state itself. Japan raises critical questions about the current scope of sovereign immunity. It presents the ICJ and international legal community with a chance to reconsider how the principle of sovereign immunity should be reconciled with a commitment to prosecuting humanitarian crimes, particularly when victims are subjects of a colonial state; simultaneously, it exposes a searing failure on the part of international legal bodies to treat rape and sexual slavery with the same gravity as other war crimes.
