The following research project started from 2016

Research objectives:

The research on Network Governance, as along with that on New Public, has become a worldwide trend after the cold war, especially on the wake of globalization of the market. This research has been undertaken with keen interest over the past years in Japan.

Democratic Network Governance has emerged as the second generation research topic at a time when environmental issues have crossed the borders. To solve these kinds of transboundary problems, corporations are obliged to take a stake as a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  (E. Sorensen and J. Torfing (2007) Theories of Democratic Network Governance)

Therefore, “One of the biggest challenges now is to unpack the role of Network Governance within the global network; a network that is usually multicultural, and diversified, so as to connect different actors in various regions or countries to overcome unclear rules and norms and lead towards a certain policy” (ibid,311).  This project aims to contribute towards the promotion of new governance research on “Human Security” and also to exhibit and explore the third generation research fields as shown below.

(i) Clarify the facts of exploitation and human trafficking occurring among vulnerable people like farmers who were obliged to migrate and work away from home in East Asia where Japan and China battled for the establishment of　political  and economic superiority. The target group are the people who were deprived of lands because of the investment or development and those who fled from the conflicts and political persecutions particularly in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.

(ii) Examine how transboundary network, relevant economic enterprises, NGOs, governments and international organisations, can play their roles to function well for helping people to be independent using the recent global norms and standards such as in The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights 2011 [A/HRC/17/31].

(iii) To unfold the possibilities and flaws of Network Governance for access to justice in order to achieve sustainable peace and development as well as suggest indicators for “Human Security”.

Idea of this research is that applicants continue to pursue a follow-up survey on the land glab incident that happened in Kampong Speu Province of Cambodia since 2010.

This incident is a typical case of malicious land deprivation of the farmers by the Thailand-based company that gained an economic concession based on the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-supported Land Law of 2001. The farmers who resisted against the Thailand-based company for compensation were suppressed. In January 2014, Oxfam Australia accused ANZ Bank, who financed the company, of an accomplice for environmental destruction, human rights violation, and child labor. And for reasons of not abiding by the United Nations Guiding Principles, the association of a local NGO and international NGOs jointly submitted the petition to the Australian government on charges that ANZ Bank had not followed the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. It is of utmost importance to draw our attention towards the future development of this procedure.

The forced eviction of farmers from the farmland due to the new development and investment has been commonly seen in these countries. In Myanmar, there is a petition to JICA by the residents on the construction of a special economic zone, in which Japan supports both publicly and privately. In this way, more cross-country conflicts are expected in the coming days.

Even in Vietnam, the conflicts surrounding the land in the rural areas are like those of China where the judicial solutions cannot be expected due to the problem of corruption. The victims, upon their labor migration, are exploited in neighboring countries. They become the hotbed of human trafficking and an object of ethic persecution.

These kinds of cross-border conflicts, as evident by the ongoing Rohingya asylum seeker boat crisis, will be major concerns in Asia in the future. The applicant had worked as a lawyer to protect the Indo-China refugees as early as 1980s. Gaining some experience working as a UNHCR staff, the applicant had also worked as a UNTAC Human Rights Officer based in Cambodia. Afterwards, as an expert, he was in-charge of supporting the legislation required for market-oriented economization for European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) focusing on Central Asia.

Based on these experiences, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(A) (Conflict and Development: International Development Cooperation for Peace Building research), was conducted under his leadership since July 2003 (In 2003, he conducted overseas fieldwork in Hanoi and researched on dispute resolution). Applying the development support for peace building, he examined the Asian Law Development for governance on dispute management.

This research contributes to the achievement of sustainable peace for human security based on the foundation of 1) Dispute resolution, 2) Law Reform Assitance, 3) Refugees and Migrants.  The research is focused on how governance should function in multiple and complementary ways in the market, civil society and national institutions (including international organizations). It will examine and develop various ways of governance in East Asia where Japan and China compete for their influence.

The research will clarify how the corporations in the advanced countries should be responsible and conduct due diligence in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles for any human rights violations in the developing countries.

In particular, the research will explore how to secure the access of refugees as well as forced migrants (including internally displaced people and development/environmental refugees) from the sending countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar (additionally Chinese and Mongolians) to remedies in the context of East Asia. To achieve this, we aim the following seven as mentioned below:

 (i) To clarify specifically what conditions are necessary for new governance that make this function in business operating on global market principles.

(ii) To investigate how international norms, such as the United Nations Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and businesses’ autonomous norms like ISO26000, are explained and applied, or not applied, by the above countries, Japan, China, as well as Australia and other related developed countries and international organizations, and to clarify their transboundary mutual complementarity.

(iii) To unravel respectively the actual facts of human rights violation under the background of disparities and corruption related to foreign investments (including law reform assistance) in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the relationship between business and the refugee issue related to conflicts in Myanmar; To clarify the fundamental conditions to get out of the vicious cycle of violence, and to realize “rule of law” rooted in the field of a peace dividend by appropriate technology and fair labor.

(iv) To investigate the present state of practice of international laws concerning refugees and human rights in national laws of the above countries, and to compare and contrast the governance and socio-economic conditions that support the law enforcement.

(v) To inquire into the specific process of human rights due diligence and the necessary information collection and analytical skills for this process in order to realize the investment that contributes to sustainable “human security” that fits the conditions.

(vi) To try to build a database of that information, and to index business activities from the perspective of “human security”.

(vii) To clarify the division of roles, synergy, and mutually complementary relations between stakeholders that support this practice, including international institutions and governments, civil society and NGO/NPOs, and private sectors and companies; To propose better network governance practices.

The academic features, originality, and expected results and significance of the research:

The feature and originality of this research lies in (1) empirical inspection through fieldwork on whether international/transnational norms can function in the East Asian context; (2) making full use of regional studies for that purpose, (3) utilizing interdisciplinary methods, and (4) adopting participant observation practices. How can network governance, which gained attention due to the globalization of market, function in various contexts of East Asian countries around China, and Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar that are moving toward ASEAN economic integration?

We develop global research on international law and international politics empirically on the basis of regional studies such as history and geography that is necessary to understand local laws (national laws and customs) and politics, and labor economics that involves population dynamics. The research discusses network governance concerning access to justice with the focus on the role of non-governmental actors including companies and NGOs. As there is little existing literature on the issue, the research is a pioneer study. The notion of “human security” was brought into the stage of the United Nations after the end of the Cold War, and the Japanese government played a role in its conceptualization. However, in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in September 2015, the notion was not directly mentioned. Nevertheless, as results of the research, we expect to utilize the notion in the SDGs, and present new ways of governance that can go beyond national frameworks and guarantee the security of vulnerable people worldwide.

As is summarized in the goal to “provide access to justice for all” in the SDGs, it is a worldwide pursue to construct network governance that can address the neo-colonial problems faced by neo-liberalism, restrain maldistribution of power and fixed polarization on the micro and macro level in a mutually complementary way, and empower vulnerable people. By unravelling its possibilities and challenges, in pursuance of coping with the safety problem of people who are persecuted and unprotected by their countries, and the threats to mankind that cannot be solved by one single country, the research makes sense by proposing, from Japan to the world, a new way of global governance that can realize “human security”, which overcomes the boundaries of sovereign state system.

Research Plan · Methods

The research is divided into four groups, each group comprising a research partner as group leader, two collaborating researchers, and one research fellow. In principle, we hold plenary research seminars every quarter to report research plans and progresses, and small-scale research meetings every other month. We conduct field work once or twice per year in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar (with supplementary fieldwork in China and Japan). We also work with foreign co-researchers in the field in investigation and cooperate with research projects in Australia and Singapore.

Open symposiums and open seminars are held serially at the end or beginning of each year. Papers are contributed to academic conferences and academic journals from time to time. Also, we provide feedback to practitioners of companies, NGOs, governments, and international organizations, and conduct research and practices cyclically. The reports are conducted in principle in English.