Published on September 17, 2019.
This article discusses the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the activities of Professor Akibayashi Kozue, focusing on lobbying at the United Nations Office at Geneva, involvement with the UN Human Rights Council and the Conference on Disarmament, and claims concerning the Okinawa base issue.
It critically examines feminist peace theory, SEALDs, the movement against the Henoko base relocation, and the problem of simplifying Okinawa into a framework of “ethnic minority versus state power.”

September 17, 2019.
A full-time secretary-general and full-time staff manage its operations, carry out lobbying activities at the United Nations Office at Geneva, and mainly monitor the UN Human Rights Council and the Conference on Disarmament.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Run by a Feminist Organization.
According to the website of its Japan branch, the American organization called “Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom” is the world’s first women’s peace organization, formed in 1915, Taisho 4, during the First World War, when women from Western countries who longed for a peaceful world without weapons gathered in The Hague in the neutral country of the Netherlands.
It had already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 and has its international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
It is a full-scale NGO in which a full-time secretary-general and full-time staff manage its operations, carry out lobbying activities at the United Nations Office at Geneva, and mainly monitor the UN Human Rights Council and the Conference on Disarmament.
The vision of this organization is said to be “equality and justice for all people, and a world without violence and military conflict,” but when one looks at the diagram called the “Theory of Change” advocated by the organization, the final goal is “Feminist Peace.”
From this, one can infer that its actual nature is that of a feminist organization.
And since 2015, a Japanese woman has been selected as the international president of this organization.
She is Professor Akibayashi Kozue of Doshisha University.
I listened to a lecture by Professor Akibayashi posted online, which was held at American University in the United States in September 2016.
“Okinawa, which was an independent kingdom until the nineteenth century, was annexed by modernized Japan.
Because it is an ethnic minority and lacks political power, U.S. military bases are concentrated there.”
“The dangerous Futenma base would not meet safety standards in the United States and could not be approved.
The runway and a school are adjacent to each other.
That is why accidents occur.”
“In 1996, the government announced that it would relocate Futenma Air Station within five to seven years, but even now in 2016, this has not been realized.”
On November 13, 2015, Professor Akibayashi also participated in the “Nationwide Simultaneous Emergency Action Opposing the Construction of the New Henoko Base,” held by SEALDs KANSAI in front of JR Motomachi Station in Chuo Ward, Kobe City.
Anyone would think that if we could do without bases, nothing would be better than that.
However, there are, of course, appropriate reasons why bases exist in Okinawa at enormous cost.
Without considering that, and without criticizing the far-left activists who obstruct the relocation of the base through illegal acts, they simplify the issue into a structure of a weak ethnic minority versus arrogant state power.
The threat of the neighboring country’s hegemonism also does not enter the scope of their thinking.
The same structure exists here as in the case of criticizing the Japanese government without criticizing North Korea.
It is precisely the mentality of SEALDs.