News

30 Oct 2006

North Korea also a severe threat to its own people, report says

Press Release

'Failure to Protect' Against Human Rights Abuses Warrants Security Council Action

UN Nuclear Sanctions Could Inadvertently Worsen Suffering of North Korean People

LONDON - Citing the new UN doctrine that each state has "a responsibility to protect" its own citizens from the most severe human rights abuses, a report issued today points to egregious violations of rights by North Korea and calls for immediate action by the UN Security Council under a parallel track to the UN's actions over North Korea's nuclear test. UN sanctions levied earlier this month may inadvertently worsen the abysmal human rights situation.

Failure to Protect: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea affirms that "the Security Council has independent justification for intervening in North Korea either because of the government's failure in its responsibility to protect or because North Korea is a nontraditional threat to the peace."

The highly detailed report, based on a careful review of available information, was prepared by the law firm DLA Piper US LLP in cooperation with the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.  Commissioning the report were Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic; Kjell Magne Bondevik, former prime minister of Norway, and Professor Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Failure to Protect focuses primarily on the active involvement of the government in crimes against humanity through:

• Food Policy and Famine - North Korea allowed as many as 1 million of its citizens to die of starvation.  "Hunger and starvation remain a persistent problem with over 37 percent of children chronically malnourished," says the report.  North Korea still denies the World Food Program access to 42 of 203 counties in the country.
  
• Treatment of Political Prisoners - Some 200,000 people are imprisoned in the North Korean gulag without due process of law and in near-starvation conditions. More than 400,000 are estimated to have died in the prison system over 30 years.

The report also describes North Korea's involvement in the production of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, presenting this information as a context for the way North Korea misallocates its resources.

"For more than a decade, human rights concerns have been relegated to a second-class status for fear of driving North Korea from the nuclear talks," said Jared Genser, a Washington-based attorney with DLA Piper.  "Now that its government has gone ahead with a nuclear test anyway, it is time to have a parallel-track strategy for alleviating the suffering of the North Korea people through Security Council action."

"The nuclear threat posed by the North Korean government has raised concerns all over the world," added Debra Liang-Fenton, executive director of the U.S. Committee.  "But no less alarming is the active involvement of the North Korean government in committing crimes against humanity.  Now, with sanctions, the people may inadvertently suffer more."

The UN defines "nontraditional threats to peace" as non-military threats with serious cross-border ramifications.  North Korea's widespread violations of human rights have also created a number of nontraditional threats, among them a vast outflow of refugees (as many as 400,000 North Koreans have fled the country in recent years) and active participation by the North Korean government in criminal enterprises, such as drug production and trafficking and money counterfeiting and laundering, the report stated.

"Security Council intervention is a necessary international and multilateral vehicle to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people," the report concluded.

"The situation in North Korea is one of the most egregious human rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today," said Havel, Bondevik, and Wiesel in a joint statement. "Yet, sadly, because North Korea is also one of the most closed societies on Earth, information about the situation there has only trickled out over time."

The report recommends the UN Security Council adopt a non-punitive resolution urging the North Korean government to allow open access for international humanitarian organizations to feed its people, calling for the release of political prisoners, as well as insisting that the government allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea to visit the country.

CONTACTS:
Aaron Schoenherr for DLA Piper, (312) 252-4103
David Roscow for U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, (703) 276-2772, Ext. 21