human rights of female migrant workers suffering from multiple discriminatory acts as women,
migrants, and workers.
In particular, female migrant workers were often found to be unable to respond properly to
sexual violence, etc., due to communication difficulties, economic difficulties, low awareness
on reporting and remedy procedures, anxiety about their status of stay, and the location of their
workplaces (for those working in rural areas).
C. Recommending Institutional Arrangements for Legal Limitations of
Persons with Disabilities in Acquiring Certificates and Licenses
On April 12, we recommended that the Prime Minister implement government-wide measures
to abolish and ease 27 legal provisions that constrain the attainment of certificates and licenses
by persons with mental disabilities and we recommended that the Minister of Health and
Welfare abolish the provision in the Social Welfare Services Act that constrains persons with
mental disabilities from attaining the social worker certificate.
Six acts, including the Mother and Child Health Act (grounds for qualifications for the
installation and operation of postpartum care centers), were found to severely restrict the
attainment of certificates and licenses by persons with mental disabilities. As many as 17
acts, including the Public Health Control Act (grounds for qualifications for barbers and
beauticians), define mental disability as grounds for disqualification in principle and permit
the attainment of a certificate as an exception only when the applicant is recognized to have no
difficulty in performing the job based on the diagnosis of medical specialists, etc. The Social
Welfare Services Act enforced on April 25, 2018, included mental disability in the grounds for
disqualification as social workers in principle.
Such legal provisions presuppose that persons with mental disabilities are potentially
dangerous and incompetent. However, we viewed that it is unjustified to exclude all persons
with mental disabilities in such a manner, as such a presupposition has no specific grounds,
mental disability can be treated in the same manner as other physical disabilities, and job
qualifications can be adjusted based on the severity of disability and treatment progress.
We also viewed that the classification of mental patients should be revised in a way that
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Commission's Major Activities