Activities by the JDF Headquarters for Comprehensive Support of Persons with Disabilities Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake

JDF Headquarters for Comprehensive Support of Persons with Disabilities Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake

Established in 2004, the Japan Disability Forum (JDF) is a nation-wide non-governmental organization in the field of disabilities composed of thirteen organizations of/for persons with disabilities. Taking into consideration international trends embodied in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Asian and Pacific Decade of Disabled Persons, JDF has strived, since its founding, to create a society that everyone can easily live in through various efforts such as making policy proposals within Japan and conducting awareness raising activities while working with numerous types of organizations in various fields.

On March 11, 2011, the Ministerial Board for Disability Policy Reform met in the morning in order to coordinate efforts related to a cabinet decision on revisions to the Basic Act for Persons with Disabilities, an important first step in ratifying and putting into effect the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In response to this, it was decided that the JDF Board of Representatives would meet from 3:00 p.m. at the Japan National Council of Social Welfare located in the New Kasumigaseki Building.

At 2:46 p.m., immediately before the meeting started, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit. Even in Tokyo, there were long jolts with a seismic intensity of 5+ on the Japanese scale, and after the shaking settled down, the various attendees gathered in the New Kasumigaseki Building with looks on their faces that this was no trivial earthquake. The television on the fifth floor carried news of the damage in the various areas, and people watched the video of the horrific tsunami hitting the Tohoku coast with disbelief. The meeting was postponed that day.

Fortunately, no attendees were injured, but everyone faced various hardships, such as not being able to contact people because of overwhelmed phone lines and difficulty in getting home since trains were not running and traffic was hardly moving due to traffic jams. Some people had never been able to make it to the conference room, some spent hours getting home, and some gave up getting home and spent the night in Kasumigaseki. Representatives of the disability organizations either shared rides home that took many hours or slept cramped together on the sofas in the conference room. That was the start of JDF's support activities.

After the earthquake, the various types of disability organizations quickly established numerous bodies including the Central Headquarters for Disaster Relief for Deaf People in the Great East Japan Earthquake, Headquarters to Provide Support for Blind People in the Great East Japan Earthquake, Relief Headquarters for Persons with Disabilities of Tohoku-Kanto Great Earthquake, and Disaster Measures Liaison Council of Organizations for Children with Disabilities, Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, and each body quickly launched support activities in its particular field.

JDF submitted the Emergency Request for Special Support for Persons With Disabilities Affected by the Disaster on March 14, and agreement was reached that the thirteen nation-wide organizations should continue to collaborate on activities, and the JDF Headquarters for Comprehensive Support of Persons with Disabilities Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake was established at the executive board meeting held on March 18.

The JDF representative and JDF executive board chair took up the positions of headquarters chief and secretary general, respectively, and others were placed in charge of general affairs/public relations, information gathering/dissemination, inter-organization coordination, and finance/accounting. The following are the main activities that have been undertaken by the headquarters.

Requests to the government, etc.

As of the writing of this report, JDF has submitted requests related to the Great East Japan Earthquake seven times to the government and other bodies. One could argue that the JDF requests are unique in that they covered various types of issues in various fields based on the opinion of the thirteen member organizations, that they included issues faced by the extensive disaster area based on the activities of the disaster area support centers in the three prefectures discussed below, and that they could be submitted to the central government as they brought together various types of opinions from numerous fields and geographical areas since the JDF is a body of organizations from throughout Japan. On account of the various opinions and wide-range of issues related to the earthquake that caused unprecedented damage, various requests were made, and these were submitted to multiple ministries and agencies.

The requests were taken directly to the responsible sections in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Cabinet Office section responsible for disaster prevention, and public hearings held by political parties. There were also opportunities for irregular informal talks. The seventh list of requests, the most recent one, was presented directly to Minister of State for Disaster Management and Policies for Persons with Disabilities Masaharu Nakagawa. However, even though we speak of the Cabinet Office, it is not in charge of everything, and it is difficult to make the rounds of the various Ministry bureaus and agencies; therefore, it is important to combine activities that are focused on the particular issues of each organization with the comprehensive activities conducted by JDF.

Collecting and disseminating information

A special webpage for the headquarters was created in order for JDF to collect and disseminate a wide-range of information. The goal was to create an information site useful for parties affected by the disaster and supporters and, in the medium- to long-term, policymakers and researchers. As September, 2012, the site had been accessed more than 80,000 times.

In addition, two activity reporting sessions were held in order to report on JDF's support activities (first reporting session: July 13, 2011, at the Shugiin Dai-ichi Giinkaikan (Building for the members of the House of Representatives); second reporting session: March 1, 2012, at the Sangiin Giinkaikan (Building for the members of the House of Councilors); jointly held with The Nippon Foundation). In addition to raising a wide-range of disability-related issues based on the actual support activities conducted in the disaster area, the sessions were held to express thanks for the support from various parties and as one way to make policy requests since it was held at the Giinkaikan (Diet members' building).

Furthermore, the disaster area support center (discussed below) disseminated information in the form of news releases for the print media and over the Internet.

Since countries throughout the world provided both material and moral support related to the Great East Japan Earthquake, efforts have been made to disseminate information internationally. In addition to adding English-versions of some of the above website's pages, we have undertaken various other activities, including holding exhibitions and side events (activity reporting sessions) at the World Ministerial Conference on Disaster Reduction in Tohoku (July 3 and 4, 2012; Miyagi, etc.) and the high-level government meeting of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Oct. 29 - Nov. 2, 2012; Inchon, Korea).

In addition, between eighteen months and two years after the earthquake, we compiled records and activity reports as of that time, and in order to make proposals in the future, we created a report on these activities and a video documentary in cooperation with The Nippon Foundation.

Collaboration with related organizations

As a general rule, activities are done in collaboration with other organizations. Although having disability organizations in different fields whose activities target different people work on common support activities in the disaster area was difficult in some ways, collaboration was consistently undertaken, which included the various organizations helping each other check the safety of their members, connecting people who needed material support and services to organizations that could provide that support, and dividing up the area of operations.

There was similar collaboration with organizations not directly related to disabilities, including the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan and the Nippon Foundation.

As a private organization, we also actively collaborate with the government. On the national level, we have cooperated with survey of actual conditions in the disaster area conducted by the section of the Cabinet Office responsible for disaster prevention and undertaken various other activities. Through local support centers, we ascertained actual conditions for persons with disabilities living at home, and support offices for persons with disabilities (ex. facilities/workshops for persons with disabilities) in cooperation with the government. A notable example of this is our work related to conducting a survey of actual conditions in Minamisoma-shi, Fukushima, and Rikuzentakata-shi, Iwate, using private information on persons with disabilities provided by the two municipalities.

Serving as liaison with outside parties

As a cooperative association of thirteen organizations, the JDF also serves as a liaison with outside parties, including the government, media, and supporters. One aspect of this is submitting requests to the government and other parties as reported above.

In addition, JDF collects donations for activities and has received aid from numerous supporters, including ones from overseas. We would like to take this opportunity to repeat our appreciation to all these parties.

Support activities in the disaster area

In addition to serving as the headquarters as discussed above, the JDF Headquarters has sequentially opened disaster area support centers in Miyagi, Fukushima, and Iwate and conducted related support activities.

We first examined opening a support center in Sendai-shi, Miyagi, because such an extremely large area had been hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

On March 22 and 23, about ten days after the earthquake hit, several JDF members, including the executive board chair, visited Sendai-shi and Natori-shi. Public transportation was not running, and only emergency vehicles could use the highways. Essential utilities were still being restored in the area, it was difficult to obtain gas, and it was impossible to get lodging or meals at places other than designated ones. Under these conditions, we accomplished various tasks including holding meetings with local disability organizations and support organizations that had made it to the disaster area, making a courtesy call to Miyagi Prefecture and Sendai-shi, visiting both general emergency shelters and fukushi (welfare) emergency shelters (emergency shelters for vulnerable citizens), and coordinating efforts to open local support centers.

On March 23, local disability organizations and related bodies gathered, and an informal meeting with JDF was held to exchange opinions. We would like to once again express our appreciation to local parties who received the JDF group during the hectic period after the disaster. At the meeting, the Miyagi Mutual Support Network for Persons with Disabilities Affected by the Disaster, a loose affiliation of local organizations, was launched, which deserves special mention.

The opinions provided by local people formed the basis for the support activities conducted by JDF. Subsequent activities included launching the JDF Miyagi Support Center on March 30, 2011, the Support Center Fukushima for Persons with Disabilities in Devastated Area on April 6, 2011, and JDF Iwate Headquarters for Supporting Persons with Disabilities Affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake on September 22, 2011 (the JDF Iwate Support Center was established on April 17, 2012, in Rikuzentakata-shi).

The details of the activities are given in each report, but a distinctive characteristics of each support center was that similar to the JDF, the national organization, they conducted activities in collaboration with many disability organizations and related organization on the prefecture level. Activities were based on collaboration driven by local organizations, with JDF member organizations and related organizations dispatching support staff from throughout Japan to each center when necessary. Because various aspects, including the damage each area sustained and the form of collaboration among groups, were different for each area, the details of the activities and how they were undertaken depended on actual conditions.

Not only are meetings to share information and check policies regularly held with members of each support center and JDF headquarters, but there are also discussions regarding common requests of the three prefectures and other efforts.

Future activities

This report was written more than one and a half years after the earthquake, but numerous issues still remain, including difficult conditions in several areas such as coastal areas and the area neighboring the nuclear power plant and conditions for evacuees who have left the disaster area and moved out of the prefecture. In addition to emergency support for people affected by the disaster, long-term support activities will be necessary for local communities and rebuilding resources. To accomplish this, it will be necessary to secure not only the people who will provide support but also financial aid.

As noted above, JDF has submitted requests seven times to the central government. While the requests cover a wide-range of issues, we would like to stress three items here: (1) quickly ascertaining actual conditions of persons with disabilities affected by the disaster (including numerical data) and examining existing disaster-prevent measures; (2) rebuilding a society that is inclusive, one of the metrics discussed in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and (3) getting persons with disabilities to participate in the process of creating future plans related to reconstruction and disaster prevention.