A/HRC/44/46/Add.1 activism of the 1950s and 1970s was strengthened in the 1990s with strategic litigation. 9 This legal mobilization benefited from partnerships that developed after 1996 between persons affected by Hansen’s disease and experts. The previous experience of non-partisan lawyers with collective litigation, the strategic use of the media and volunteer-based activism contributed to the success of the legal mobilization. 10 Also noteworthy is the personal sacrifice and dedication to this process of persons affected by Hansen’s disease themselves, who had to face individual trauma to reach a common agreement on the composition of the collective demand. In 2001, Kumamoto District Court ruled that the State’s segregation policy was unconstitutional and ordered the State to provide material reparation to persons who had suffered from it. 19. According to the 2001 Kumamoto District Court ruling, there was a lack of grounds to support the reasoning for the isolation provisions of the leprosy prevention law of 1953. This was especially so considering: (a) the evidence of the efficacy of sulfones in Japan and overseas for curing Hansen’s disease in the late 1950s; (b) the fact that the number of persons who remained severely ill had dropped sharply in Japan since the introduction of sulfones; (c) the fact that the number of new cases fell remarkably between 1955 and 1960; and (d) the widespread trend noted at international conferences on Hansen’s disease, such as the International Leprosy Conference held in Tokyo in 1958, in favour of outpatient care. The court concluded that the unconstitutionality of the leprosy prevention law dated back to at least 1960. It also recognized that the legal and policy framework that had been in place had played a major role in the production and reproduction of stigmatization on the grounds of Hansen’s disease. 20. According to the ruling, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare was responsible for not having revised and abolished the isolation policy. Furthermore, the court specified that the Ministry should have taken steps to: (a) ensure that all residents were free to leave sanatoriums; (b) eliminate institutional gaps that hindered outpatient care; and (c) eliminate discrimination and prejudice against persons affected by Hansen’s disease in society at large. Likewise, the court pointed out the omission of some members of the National Diet for not having amended or abolished the isolation provisions before or after 1965. 21. If this landmark ruling was achieved thanks to the capacity of persons affected by Hansen’s disease for self-organization and strategic litigation, the positive action taken by the State on this matter was to decide not to appeal against the court’s decision, to offer public apologies to the survivors and to put in place a large-scale administrative programme for material compensation. In 2001, the State endorsed the Act on the payment of compensation to inmates of Hansen’s disease sanatoriums, and in 2008, it adopted the Act on the promotion of a resolution of issues related to Hansen’s disease. The struggle of persons affected by Hansen’s disease in Japan is testimony to how, in the face of an abusive State that acts as the main perpetrator of human rights violations, human rights defenders played a key role in building a free and just society. As one woman affected by Hansen’s disease told the Special Rapporteur, the main lesson for history should be that Governments can be wrong and citizens must always stand up, fight and not be silenced. In the end, their story is one of what democracy should be about and the fact there can be no enjoyment of human rights without the full right to participate in public affairs. B. Access to justice and bottom-up legal and policy change: the 2019 lawsuit 22. In 2016, family members of persons who had been segregated in Hansen’s disease sanatoriums filed lawsuits against the Government, seeking compensation and an apology for their own suffering, claiming that they too had suffered discrimination and prejudice under the isolation policy. As a result of the forced segregation policy, family members, many of them at a very young age, suffered deprivation of family relations, loss of family protection, insufficient means of subsistence (despite the 1953 law providing for welfare of 9 10 6 Celeste L. Arrington, Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2016). Celeste L. Arrington, “Leprosy, legal mobilization, and the public sphere in Japan and South Korea”, Law & Society Review, vol. 48, No. 3 (September 2014).