Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Aside from the North's nuclear provocations, the international community is seeking to
step up its monitoring of the regime's human rights abuses.
The UN Human Rights Council wants to launch a special commission to scrutinize the human
rights situation in the country.
Hwang Sung-hee has the details.
North Korea may be in for tighter international monitoring of its human rights abuses, as
the UN Human Rights Council is seeking to set up a commission to investigate reports
of deteriorating living conditions and the absence of rights in North Korea.
"I feel that this is one situation which I have characterised as about the worst in the
whole world.
So there is a need, now, for a strengthened inquiry.
So that there is a more in-depth investigation of the human rights violations."
At a UN meeting in Geneva on Monday, Japan and the European Union introduced a draft
resolution that urges the top rights body to establish a two-member committee to monitor
the widespread human rights violations reported to take place in the communist state for a
year.
At least 200-thousand people including many children are believed to be detained in political
prison camps in North Korea.
A UN human rights investigator said Monday that Pyongyang is guilty of committing nine
crimes against humanity, including depriving its citizens of food, the use of torture,
arbitrary detention and the denial of freedom of expression.
The North outright denied the allegations.
"It is nothing more than a political plot aimed at sabotaging our socialist system by
defaming the dignified image of the DPRK and creating an atmosphere of international pressure."
All 47 member states of the UN Human Rights Council are reportedly on board with the resolution,
and it is expected to be approved before the Council wraps up its month-long session on
March 22nd.
Although the commission won't be able to conduct actual investigations if North Korea refuses
to cooperate, which it has in the past, the establishment of such commission will surely
increase international pressure on the regime following the implementation of fresh sanctions
by the UN Security Council.
Hwang Sung-hee, Arirang News.