Rights Abuses in North Korea

By Vaclav Havel and Kjell Magne Bondevik

Although international focus has been on North Korea's threats to disrupt the six-party talks and on the health of Kim Jong-il, we must not lose sight of the fact that the Pyongyang government remains responsible for one of the most staggering cases of human rights and humanitarian neglect in the world.

In 2006, along with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, we commissioned global law firm DLA Piper and the Committee of Human Rights in North Korea to prepare an account of the humanitarian and human rights situation in North Korea.

The resulting report concluded that North Korea had failed in its ``responsibility to protect" its citizens from the most severe violations of international law, and urged a robust international response through the U.N. Security Council.

Two years later, little has changed. Although there has been some progress in the six-party talks on the nuclear issue, discussions about the human rights and humanitarian challenges within North Korea remain an issue of secondary concern.

As a result, the three of us have commissioned a new report, titled ``Failure to Protect: The Ongoing Challenge of North Korea" to highlight the importance of this discussion and to propose an additional set of recommendations to enhance the prospects of achieving some meaningful incremental progress.

The evidence and analysis contained in these reports is disturbing: North Korea is actively committing crimes against humanity against its own people.

During the 1990s, the government allowed as many as one million people, and possibly many more, to die during years of protracted famine. At this time, the government consistently prioritized the diversion of resources to its military and nuclear programs away from food purchases for its citizens.

Although limited improvements have been seen since 2000, recent consecutive years of flooding have devastated North Korea's agricultural regions which, combined with the government's willingness to leverage international food donations for its own political gain, has left the country once more on the precipice of another food disaster.

Furthermore, North Korea continues to hold as many as 200,000 people without due process of law for arbitrary reasons in political prison camps.

Not only are they imprisoned in unspeakable conditions ― fed starvation-level rations, forced to labor under brutal conditions and, subject to torture and execution for trivial offences ― but so are their relatives, including the elderly and children, under a three-generation guilt-by-association system instituted by North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung.

It is in this context that we reaffirm our call for action under the ``responsibility to protect" doctrine.

This relatively new doctrine for diplomacy holds that while a state such as North Korea retains sovereignty over its own territory, the international community has an obligation to intervene should that state fail to protect its citizens from the most severe human rights abuses.

It is clear that the North Korean government has failed to protect its people. It is time for the international community to act.

The new report recommends a multilateral approach to these challenges in North Korea:

First, direct international engagement with North Korea must be expanded on the human rights and humanitarian situation.

Second, human rights concerns should be included in the six-party talks.

Third, the U.N. General Assembly should strengthen its annual resolution on North Korea by referencing the ``responsibility to protect" doctrine and calling for an investigation into whether the conditions in North Korea constitute a violation of this doctrine.

For too long, too many in the international community have refused to address North Korea's flagrant human rights abuses for fear their criticisms would drive the government away from discussions of its nuclear program.

However, time has shown that this restraint has not yielded enhanced compromise from Kim Jong-il, but has only allowed him to ignore his people's suffering.

The world cannot continue to postpone discussion of these critical issues. We owe it to the people of North Korea to take action to alleviate their misery.

Vaclav Havel is former president of the Czech Republic. Kjell Magne Bondevik is former prime minister of Norway and president of the Oslo Center for Peace of Human Rights.