Must-Read: NYT Op-Ed by Havel, Wiesel & Bondevik Calls on U.N. to ‘Turn North Korea Into a Human Rights Issue’

The authors,  Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik have co-authored a powerful argument  for confronting  Kim Jong Il’s atrocities against the North Korean people, which they call “one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.” They also call for a  “renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country’s citizens:”

For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of the North Korean people would risk driving the country away from discussions over its nuclear program.

But with his recent actions, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has shown that this approach neither stopped the development of his nuclear program nor helped North Koreans.

The authors then begin to articulate what this “renewed international effort” should be.   Unfortunately, the effort they propose begins and ends at the United Nations, an organization that has been a model of failure  when it comes to  standing up for the people of  North Korea.   During the political cleansing of ten percent of North Korea’s people, the U.N.’s  General Secretary, Special Envoy, High Commissioner for Refugees, and High Commissioner for Human Rights  not only didn’t do a damn thing about it, they avoided the entire issue like a child support claim.

[W]ith the unanimous adoption by the United Nations Security Council of the doctrine that each state has a responsibility to protect its own citizens from the most egregious of human-rights abuses, a new instrument for diplomacy has emerged.

States will retain sovereignty over their own territory, but if they should fail to protect their own citizens from severe human-rights abuses, the international community now has an obligation to intervene through regional bodies and the United Nations, up to and including the Security Council.

If you wonder why this is the argument’s weak point, look no further than the fact that when the authors  wanted to document the horrors in  the North, there wasn’t a single  U.N. report they could  pull off the shelf. 

It is in this context that, working with the law firm DLA Piper and the United States Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, we commissioned a report on the failure of the North Korean government to exercise its responsibility to protect its own people. The evidence and analysis in this report are deeply disturbing. Indeed, it is clear that North Korea is actively committing crimes against humanity — against its own people.

Ten years after the height of the Great Famine, a  22-page report released last month is as good as they’ve done.   Instead, the authors went to  an American NGO, which  commissioned a private American law firm to write this 149-page report.  This report by the International Crisis Group is another excellent effort.  These and many  other private NGO reports (many of the best ones  funded by HRNK)  vastly exceed the U.N. report, as much of an improvement  as even that report is.  The NGO reports are superior not just for the amount of information they contain, but for the  clarity of their language, the  rigor of their methods, and  the specificity of their findings.

I’d rejoice more than anyone if the U.N. suddenly found its soul, wrote a consistent set of minimal human rights standards to be enforced, and found a politically neutral mechanism to enforce them.  If only.   Recently, the U.N. has mostly managed to demonstrate is propensities for corruption, overreaching, and moral drift.  The new Human Rights Council is as good an example of this as anyone needs.  Do we really think that  Ban Ki Moon, who spent so much of his career  covering for Kim Jong Il, will lead the U.N. back to moral relevance?  On this, of all  issues?

Now, the stronger part of the piece, its indictment.  Count One is the  intentional starvation of  its people, which begins with the lowest commonly cited estimate for the North Korean famine’s death toll:

North Korea allowed perhaps one million — and possibly many more — of its own citizens to die during the famine in the 1990’s. This was caused in part by the government’s decision to reduce food purchases as international assistance increased so that it could divert resources to its military and nuclear program.

Hunger and starvation remain a persistent problem today, with more than 37 percent of North Korean children chronically malnourished. And yet North Korea has requested less food assistance from the World Food Program and refuses to let the program monitor food distribution in some 42 of 203 counties in the country.

As a result of the cuts in food aid, the program has said that millions of North Koreans will face real hardship this winter and many aid groups have warned of another famine.

Count Two is for the Gulag:

Furthermore, North Korea holds as many as 200,000 people in its political prisons. Not only are real or imagined dissenters imprisoned, but so are their relatives, including the elderly and children, under a guilt-by-association system instituted by North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung.

Prisoners in the gulag are provided starvation-level rations, forced to work long days under brutal conditions, and many face torture or execution for trivial offenses. It is estimated that more than 400,000 have died in the North Korean gulag over 30 years.

Those are facts that need to be placed on the public record again and again until people and governments attach real consequences to  atrocities like these.  So what makes the authors think the U.N. can do that?

Our report recommends that, as a first step, the Council should adopt a non-punitive resolution urging open access to North Korea for humanitarian relief, the release of political prisoners, access for the special rapporteur and engagement by the United Nations.

We also urge the incoming secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, to make his first official action a briefing of the Security Council on this dire situation.

I’m glad they say “as a first step,” because I can’t see why  the authors expect  a non-punitive resolution (a very angry letter)  to make much of a difference just a few paragraphs after  they remind us  how good those unilateral North Koreans  are at ignoring the U.N.  Sure, saying something is better than saying nothing; it might even be  a condition precedent to finally doing something.  But make no mistake:   just as nonpunitive diplomacy could not disarm Kim Jong Il, it won’t stop  him from killing his people.  Effective action will require the force of tangible consequences:  an expulsion or suspension  from the U.N., sanctions against North Korea’s business partners, or the threat of economic consequences for North Korea’s primary enabler, China.  Nonbinding and nonpunitive actions won’t save lives.  On the other hand, some of the most potentially effective actions are those that individual nations or private groups could take.

In the end, the value of this op-ed isn’t the approach it advocates, it’s the consciousness that these three great men have raised about a  dire situation that the U.N. and the Human Rights Industry have mostly ignored for the last decade.   If that means more public outrage in Europe and the United States, then it will undercut those of whom the authors speak in their first paragraph  — appeasers, accomodators, and deal-cutters who would downplay human rights issues  for diplomatic or economic reasons.  Finally,  this  argument will  put powerful pressure on Ban Ki Moon to address issues he must wish he could continue to ignore for another ten years or another million deaths … whichever comes last.