Intercountry23

Last year, the minister of justice’s private social gathering, “Immigration Control Policy Gathering” has completed the interim report on reexamination on the refugees application system.

The contents of proposal are as follows: 1) Until the result for the application for refugees comes out, we legally guarantee the refugee applicant for not being deported forcibly; 2) From current period of 60 days to apply for refugee recognition, we will revise the law by extending the period to 6 months to i year, and 3) We will establish the shelter and offer food, clothing and place to live. This movement by the government for the amendment of the Refugee Recognition Law has started in due course of an incident in Shinyo, China, where the asylum-seekers were taken to the police. This year at the regular session of the Diet, this will be presented as an amended proposal of Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Laws.

In January, ISSJ will send a social workers to Belgium, France, England, and Germany to participate in the mission, “Inspection of the Shelter for the Refugee Applicants Abroad”, sponsored by Refugee Headquarters. Along with ISSJ, the Refugee Support Association (a member of RAJA) and Japan Evangelical Lutheran Association are planning to participate in this program. ISSJ strongly expects that these governmental movements will be realized as soon as possible and as the result the refugee assistance will be promoted positively.

This year’s theme for the movie gathering is “Encounter”. There are many kinds of encounters in our life, including happy encounter, unexpected encounter, and precious encounter. This year, we would like to introduce these “Encounters” in our movie gatherings.

Thank you for your support on the 45th Charity movie gathering, which was held on October 18th of last year. On that day, many guests came to the gathering and we have ended the gathering with great success. We are very grateful for your support. From this movie gathering, we have received contribution of \3,007,093, including the profit from bazaar and coin fund-raising. We would like to spend this precious money on the children and family, who need our support beyond national boundries.

We are planning to hold another gathering on Friday of June 13 at Kudan hall. We intend to send the information about this gathering in the end of April.

International Cooperation Festival 2002

On October 5 and 6, we participated in “International Cooperation Festival 2002”, which was held in Hibiya Park. This was third year for us to participate in this festival. This festival is the biggest international cooperation event in Japan and more than 200 voluntary organization, NGO, institutions of UN, and governmental institutions, etc participated in this event. These organizations are involved in education, health, assisting the refugees, and emergency support, etc. The biggest purpose for this event was to deepen the knowledge about the international cooperation and to expand the involvement towards the international cooperation among the citizens. ISSJ participated in this event to notify the publicize our Cambodia Project. The event was favored with fine weather and many people visited the Hibiya Park under the fine weather in autumn. Collaborating with other organizations, which belong to “Domestic Refugee Support Association”, ISSJ held a workshop and explained in detail about the refugees and the refugee applicants living in Japan. And in order to notify the public, we have demonstrated the types of support, which are provided to the refugees. During the workshop, Somalian, who was requesting for protection to the Japanese government, has made a speech that was a very valuable experience for the participants. We would like to thank all of the people who have attended and also the volunteers who have supported this event. Thank you very much.