Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
| Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea | |
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| Presented | 7 February 2014 (general distribution) |
| Location | Geneva, Switzerland, United Nations Human Rights Council; Also available online |
| Author(s) |
Michael Donald Kirby (Chair, Australia), Sonja Biserko (Serbia), Marzuki Darusman (Special Rapporteur, Indonesia) |
| Purpose | Investigate the grave, systematic and widespread violations of human rights in North Korea |
The Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the landmark document resulting from the investigations on human rights in North Korea commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2013 and concluded in 2014.
The report unequivocally concluded that the DPRK regime systematically violated human rights including freedom of thought, expression and religion; freedom from discrimination; freedom of movement and residence; and the right to food.
The commission further determined that the State had committed crimes against humanity and manifestly failed to uphold its Responsibility to Protect. These crimes entail "extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation".
Based on the findings in the report, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 69/188 in 2014 condemning human rights abuses and urging the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court. That same year, and for the first time, the Security Council convened to address human rights in North Korea, but no resolution was adopted.
Since 2003 the United Nations General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has repeatedly passed resolutions expressing their concerns about the violations of human rights in North Korea.
The UN Commission on Human Rights (the predecessor of the HRC) established the mandate for the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK in 2004, issuing reports annually. North Korea did not cooperate with this mandate. In addition, in 2009, the DPRK government was the first state to not accept any of the 167 recommendations received from the adoption of its first Universal Periodic Review (a review on human rights conducted by the HRC on all UN members). Both the Special Rapporteur and the UN human rights commissioner denounced grave violations, with the latter saying that the situation in the DPRK was “the worst in the whole world”.
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