(Geneva) – The North Korean government should urgently act on the recommendations from United Nations member states during the fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of North Korea’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council on November 7, 2024, Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group said today.
In the UPR draft report circulated on November 11, 2024, North Korea effectively rejected 88 recommendations, including those calling for cooperating with UN human rights mechanisms, ending torture, releasing political prisoners, ending forced labor, and ensuring the right to freedom of expression.
“North Korea’s rejection of so many recommendations to improve its human rights record demonstrates its government’s utter disregard for international human rights standards and the rights of the North Korean people,” said Simon Henderson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The North Korean government needs to end its brutal repression of fundamental rights and end its people’s increasing isolation from the world.”
Several UN member states urged North Korea to implement the recommendations of the landmark 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report, including clarifying the situation and whereabouts of forcibly disappeared people. The 2014 report found that the North Korean government’s widespread and systematic violations of human rights constituted crimes against humanity. North Korea rejected those recommendations.
At the UPR, member states offered a total of 306 recommendations to the North Korean government, spanning its long record of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. Numerous governments said that North Korea should take immediate steps to address its human rights crisis, including taking measures to address chronic and avoidable malnutrition and starvation, caused in part by diversion of essential resources to the military’s leadership and to its weapons programs.
Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group submitted recommendations in April as part of North Korea’s fourth UPR cycle. The groups highlighted the government’s increasingly harsh controls and human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, and unfair trials, which maintain the country’s climate of fear and obedience.
At the UPR, numerous countries called on North Korea to take concrete action to uphold civil and political rights, including by decriminalizing the rights to freedom of expression and movement under the country’s Reactionary Thought and Culture Rejection Act and other legislation. Human Rights Watch published a report in March 2024 documenting North Korea’s severe restrictions on movement between 2018 and 2023 and its impact on the general population’s livelihoods and access to basic necessities such as food and medicine.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government imposed extreme measures on resident diplomats and international organization workers, leading diplomats and UN and international nongovernmental organizations to leave the country. During the current review, 16 countries said that North Korea should grant unfettered access to UN human rights observers. Several also said that North Korea should allow UN humanitarian and development assistance.
Many council members called for the release of political prisoners, including nine countries that recommended closing political prison camps. Over 20 countries, such as South Korea and Ireland, also urged North Korea to ensure protections against torture in detention facilities, including against people forcibly repatriated to North Korea.
Canada said that North Korea should end forced abortions for women repatriated while pregnant, as documented in the 2014 report. Many countries recommended that North Korea ratify the Convention Against Torture and the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearance, while others recommended that it ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Gambia said that North Korea should abolish forced labor overseas for North Koreans and Namibia and Sri Lanka urged North Korea to become a member of the International Labour Organization and ratify its core conventions.
The North Korean government should accept UN members’ recommendations, Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group said.
“North Korea under the Kim family’s regime has used executions, political prisons and work camps, torture, and show trials as tools to foster a climate of fear and force its people into obedience,” said Ethan Hee-Seok Shin, legal analyst at Transitional Justice Working Group. “The international community must not turn a blind eye any longer. UN member states should engage with the North Korean government directly and at UN forums and work to hold it accountable to its international human rights obligations.”
