On Sunday, a coalition of civil society groups urged UNESCO to expedite a long-stalled application to include documents related to Japan's wartime sexual slavery of women in the Memory of the World Register.
In May 2016, civil society groups from eight countries, including South Korea and China, formally requested UNESCO to include documents related to women (primarily Korean) forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.
These submissions, titled "Voices of Comfort Women," include testimonies from victims and other materials related to wartime sexual slavery.
According to the civil society groups, the number of surviving comfort women victims continues to decline, with only 5 remaining in South Korea, 6 in China, 5 in the Philippines, approximately 20 in Indonesia, and 1 in East Timor.
The inclusion process has stalled since the UNESCO International Advisory Committee decided in 2017 to facilitate separate applications from this coalition and four other groups from Japan and the United States on the same issue. The first meeting, originally scheduled for June 2025, has been postponed twice.