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Hon. Arfiya Eri

Member of Parliament, National Diet of Japan

Arfiya Eri is a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament (the Diet), representing the 5th District of Chiba Prefecture (Urayasu City and Ichikawa City, just outside Tokyo).

Her historic candidacy in the April 2023 parliamentary election drew worldwide attention. A Japanese national of Uyghur and Uzbek descent, she is the first Uyghur woman to be elected to any legislature in any nation.

At 35 years old, she is currently the youngest woman in Japan’s parliament, where the average age is 55 and only 10% of the House of Representatives is female.
In 2023, Time magazine named Eri one of its 100 next-generation global leaders.
Eri is a fellow in the Foundation’s US-Japan Leadership Program, joining the network in 2018.

Born in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, Eri became a Japanese citizen at the age of 10, in 1999. Her family temporarily moved to China for her father’s work, and she graduated from the American school in Guangzhou.

After earning her B.Sc. in Foreign Service and MA in Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Eri joined the Bank of Japan, where she worked from 2012-2016 in the International Department, the Sendai Branch, and the Financial System and Bank Examination Department.

Eri joined the United Nations Secretariat in New York in 2016, where she worked on UN reform, diplomacy, human rights, and security, including in the Asia and the Pacific Division of the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, and as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary-General for Safety and Security. She left the UN in 2022 to return to Japan and run for political office.