Is the U.S. ready to take N. Korea’s crimes against humanity to the Security Council?

On balance, probably not, but hey, it’s an election year, which may or may not explain why it’s making noise like it might:

The United States, France and Australia called for the United Nations Security Council to deal with North Korea’s human rights violations, a news report said Saturday.

It isn’t clear why this push is happening nearly six months after the release of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) report; after all, the testimony before the COI was widely covered in the news, signaling what the eventual outcome had to be. Was the State Department unprepared for the report’s conclusions, not interested, or simply flat-footed and ill-prepared?

It also isn’t clear which of the three nations is pushing for the resolution most aggressively. The Government of Australia, however, has shown great interest in the findings of the report, written under the direction of native son Michael Kirby.

Ambassadors from the three countries to the U.N. sent a joint letter to the president of the Security Council on July 17, which called on the U.N. body to formally discuss a report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights violations in the North, according to the Voice of America (VOA).

The U.N.’s General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon, is of indeterminate nationality.

Following a year-long probe, the COI published a report in March, accusing North Korea of “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights.” It added that North Korean leaders’ crimes against humanity should be dealt with by the International Criminal Court. They also urged the Security Council to take proper actions against the North’s appalling track record on human rights, the VOA added.

A number of human rights groups have been pushing the Obama Administration to take issue to the Security Council. That would be a welcome move, despite the ambivalence I harbor about it. I was initially skeptical of the COI, but I later realized the importance of the attention it brought to this topic, and I was convinced to become a strong supporter. Justice Kirby himself is a significant part of my own support. I met with him twice during his last visit to Washington, and he made a deep impression on me for his gravitas and his determination.

I fully expect China to veto any resolution on human rights, and I suppose that given the state of U.S.-Russian relations, Russia will probably join that veto. I think it’s useful to force China and Russia to veto those resolutions, if only to hold their cynicism and profiteering up before the eyes of the world.

That still doesn’t completely foreclose options for bringing North Korea before the International Criminal Court, although I’ve written about that institution’s flaws.

In the end, the South Korean Government could host an ad hoc tribunal like the one Cambodia held because China wouldn’t let the ICC try the Khmer Rouge. The South Korean Constitution, after all, claims jurisdiction over the entire Korean Peninsula. If only South Korea had the courage to do that.