The UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea has urged the international community to pressure the North over its abductions of foreign nationals.
Marzuki Darusman made the call in a report submitted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Monday ahead of an official briefing at the UN Human Rights Council next week.
In the report, Darusman said that since the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) concluded last year, crimes against humanity were committed in the North, for a while, Pyongyang appeared to cooperate with the UN, but has since backtracked.
Darusman said efforts to improve human rights in the North should be made simultaneously with endeavors to refer those responsible for the crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court. He said in order to realize those aims, light should be shed on all cases of abductions and forced disappearances committed by North Korean agents.
Last year’s COI report said that the North had systematically engaged in the abduction of foreigners beginning in 1950 and has refused to return the abductees to their homelands, resulting in a large number of forced disappearances.
The COI report also stated that North Korean agents abducted hundreds of foreign citizens from the 1960s to the 1980s, mostly from South Korea, Japan and China. It pointed out that since the 1990s, the regime has also abducted people from Lebanon, Malaysia, Romania, Singapore and Thailand.
Darusman claimed that such a wide pool of countries affected by the North’s abductions necessitates an international approach to the issue, calling on the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly to take up the matter. He also proposed an international conference be held on abduction to help muster a global effort to address the issue.
The UN Third Committee is expected to pass a resolution calling for the North’s referral to the ICC for a second consecutive year this year, but it is unclear whether the international community can keep the momentum going and take a concerted approach to the North’s human rights violations.