recent years, the numbers of women holding public office has slowly increased. As of July 2003, women held 34 of 480 seats in the Lower House of the Diet and 33 seats in the 242-seat Upper House. As of September 2003, there were two women in the Cabinet. As of April 2003, 4 of the country's 47 governors were women. As of May 2019, Japan had not ratified the Genocide Convention, the 1926 Slavery Convention or the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery. Discrimination The Constitution prohibits discrimination of citizens on the basis of race, creed, gender, social status, or family origin; non-citizens are not protected from these forms of discrimination by the constitution nor the law as of 2014. Gender identity harassment For the first time ever, MHLW, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and MEXT issued ministerial regulations and formal notices requiring corporations, local governments, and schools attend to issues pertaining sexual orientation and gender identity harassment and publicly outing a person as LGBT. This took place in May 2019. Violence against women Violence against women, particularly domestic violence, often goes unreported due to social and cultural concerns about shaming one's family or endangering the reputation of one's spouse or children. NPA statistics on violence against women probably understated the magnitude of the problem. According to NPA statistics, there were 12,568 cases of alleged domestic violence and 1,499 restraining orders issued in 2003. Police took action in 41 cases in which court orders were violated. Between April and September, the 120 preferential consultation centers received 24,818 cases of domestic violence consultations. Of the total 103,986 consultations since fiscal 2002, 99.6% were for women. The law allows district courts to impose 6-month restraining orders on perpetrators of domestic violence and to sentence violators up to 1 year in prison or impose fines of up to 1 million yen. According to Supreme Court figures from January through September 2003, 1,579 applications for restraining orders against abusive spouses were sought, and 1,256 were issued. The orders either banned perpetrators from approaching their victims or ordered them to move away from the home, or both. The law also covers common-law marriages and divorced individuals; it also encourages prefectures to expand shelter facilities for domestic abuse victims and stipulates that local governments offer financial assistance to 40 private institutions already operating such shelters. The revision to the Law