The UN Universal Periodic Review and North Korea: Problems and Potential Opportunities 

Peter Ward

Research Fellow

Sejong Institute

Hanna Song

Executive Director

Database Center for North Korea Human Rights

​​■​ The Issue

❍​ North Korea is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, with large political prison camps, mass surveillance, and forced labor endemic.

❍ The UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process provides a unique and distinct opportunity for UN member states to raise North Korea’s human rights issues directly.

❍ Under the UPR, each UN member state undergoes a review of their human rights issues every four and a half years from their fellow UN member states. This review takes months of preparation with the member state, UN bodies, and civil society sector organizations each preparing supporting documents before a three-hour discussion in which recommendations are made to the member state under review.

❍ The process is not perfect, but it provides a crucial forum in which to monitor North Korea’s human rights record and its commitments to improve its human rights situation. The UPR is also linked to other UN programs involving North Korea, and can thus inform programming aimed at addressing North Korean human rights issues.

❍ This policy brief examines North Korea’s attitude to human rights in general, its approach to the UPR, and how the UPR can be better utilized by South Korea, other member states, UN institutions and North Korea itself to facilitate improvements in Pyongyang’s human rights situation.

■​ North Korean Human Rights and the UN

❍​ Human rights as a concept exist in North Korean political discourse and law, but the country’s leaders prioritize economic rights and the rights of the collective (the state) rather than individual rights.

❍ Nonetheless, the country began signing international human rights treaties in the 1980s, and is now a signatory to five of them (out of nine major human rights treaties).

❍ The country’s human rights record has come under growing scrutiny, with a UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Special Rapporteur) appointed in 2004, and a Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (COI) established in 2013.

❍ North Korea has condemned the Special Rapporteur and the COI, but continues to engage with some UN human rights treaty bodies.

❍ It has sought to improve engagement with UN institutions in part in order to prevent potential referrals to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

❍ UN treaty bodies and special processes provide crucial conduits through which to monitor North Korean human rights abuses, but most member states and NGOs are excluded from these processes.

■​​ The UPR Process and North Korea

❍​ The Universal Periodic Review was established in 2006, and each member state is subject to review every four and a half years.

❍ The member state under review provides a national report, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) prepares a compilation of material from UN sources, and other stakeholders (non-government organizations) provide a summary report.

❍ The review is then conducted on the basis of these documents over the course of a three hour hearing in which fellow UN member states provide recommendations to improve the human rights situation in the state being reviewed.

❍ North Korea has refused to accept a comparatively high proportion of recommendations made, and has been far more inclined to accept recommendations that are supportive of its system and provided by friendly states. It has, however, sometimes accept concrete recommendations from states that it does not have cordial relations with.

❍ Areas where improvements have been noted through the UPR monitoring process include education, the rights of people with disabilities, and women.

❍ Through recommendations and monitoring, the UPR provides a novel and crucial conduit through which to support improvements in human rights and monitor existing abuses.

■​​ Policy Recommendations

​❍ South Korea alongside other member states should coordinate on drafting recommendations in a wide range of areas of human rights, and utlize access points with North Korea to follow up on recommendations made and accepted by Pyongyang.

❍ The Special Rapporteur for North Korea, the UN country team (should it return to Pyongyang), and other UN organs should integrate UPR recommendations into their work.

❍ Larger human rights organizations should help support and integrate smaller, victim-led groups into their work, and support capacity building. Humanitarian organizations and security practitioners should also consider ways to engage with human rights organizations on areas of mutual interest related to the UPR and North Korea.

❍ North Korea should consider offers of technical assistance on human rights issues, improve the quality and quantity of information it provides as part of the UPR process, reengage with UN treaty bodies that it has disengaged from, and facilitate constructive dialogue with human rights organizations in order to aid more effective implementation of UPR recommendations.​