Text Fwd: UN Urges North Korea to Improve Human Rights

Korea Times
UN Urges North Korea to Improve Human Rights
12-20-2009 19:19
By Kim Sue-young, Staff Reporter

The United Nations has renewed its resolution urging North Korea to improve its human rights conditions, the foreign ministry said Sunday.

During the U.N. General Assembly in New York, 99 countries including South Korea, the United States and Japan endorsed the resolution, while 20 others, including China and Malaysia, voted against it, a ministry spokesman said. The remaining 63 countries abstained.

It is the fifth consecutive year the U.N. has issued the resolution calling on North Korea to make improvements in regard to human rights.

While not legally binding it offers grounds on which U.N. members can take measures against alleged rights violations.

The resolution, co-sponsored by 53 countries including South Korea, states that members have "very serious concerns at the persistence of continuing reports of systemic, widespread, and grave violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights" in the secretive state.

It also says that torture, public executions, forced labor and other inhumane punishments are rampant in the North.

The international organization has repeatedly urged North Korea to put an immediate end to its systemic, prevalent human rights violations and implement U.N. conventions.

North Korea has yet to issue its official response, but is expected to reject it as it has previously.

Pyongyang snubbed the resolution last year - its foreign ministry claimed through its official Korean Central News Agency that the resolution was full of "fabrications" and aimed at "stifling the nation."

Last year, in a change of position, South Korea voted for the resolution. During the previous administration, the South had abstained.

ksy@koreatimes.co.kr


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