North Korea’s abysmal human rights record could be addressed through a regional multilateral framework, the head of the world’s largest intergovernmental security bloc said Monday.
North Korea’s human rights situation has caused widespread concern especially since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry released a report in February 2014 accusing the communist country of “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.”
Pyongyang has long been suspected of human rights abuses that include holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps, committing torture and conducting public executions. The country has bristled at such criticism, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.
Lamberto Zannier, secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, told reporters that his organization believes that an improvement in human rights conditions in member nations can improve security and stability in the region.
“Dealing with human rights is not an interference in internal affairs, but in a way, a prerogative of all countries to look through a process that we call a process of peer review that involves the countries of the region at debates about the human rights situation in their countries and we have meetings where we do exactly that,” said Zannier, who is in Seoul to attend an annual conference involving the OSCE’s 57 member nations and their five Asian partner states, including South Korea.
He stressed that an important element in beginning discussions on human rights is a consensus among the parties involved, as was the case with the OSCE in its early stages.
“The issue that you might have in this region is to build a framework that gives you the tools to address human rights issues with each party in this framework, including with North Korea,” he said.
North Korea’s human rights record has increasingly been seen as a possible tool to pressure the country into returning to multilateral talks on its nuclear and missile programs.
The U.N., meanwhile, plans to open an office in Seoul later this month to monitor human rights violations in the North and raise public awareness of the issue. (Yonhap)
