Ministry Statements & Speeches:
Mr. President,
New Zealand is alarmed at the appalling state of human rights in the DPRK. It is critical that the international community voices our collective concern in a coordinated and sustained manner.
Over ten years since the publication of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK, we remain gravely concerned by the DPRK regime’s lack of action and the ongoing deterioration of the human rights situation.
We remain deeply concerned about reports of executions, abductions, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence. We join others in condemning the failure of the DPRK authorities to hold accountable those responsible for these grave human rights abuses that, in many cases, the Commission of Inquiry also found constitute crimes against humanity.
New Zealand is committed to the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. We are particularly concerned by the DPRK’s Law on Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture, which contains grossly disproportionate punishments, including the death penalty for accessing information and foreign content. We urge the DPRK regime to immediately halt all public executions and abolish the death penalty in all cases.
We are distressed by the prevalence of malnutrition, severe hunger, and widespread health problems in the DPRK. In particular, we are seriously concerned about the impact on the most vulnerable including children, women, and persons with disabilities.
We condemn the DPRK regime’s continuing diversion of the country’s scarce resources toward its development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, at the expense of the well-being of its people.
We reiterate calls for the DPRK regime to allow the return of the United Nations Development Programme and other international humanitarian agencies to support the basic needs of North Koreans.
We continue to urge the DPRK to engage with the recommendations of its November 2024 Universal Periodic Review. We hope that through meaningful cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms the DPRK will engage in crucial reforms to better protect and promote the rights of its people.
Thank you, Mr President.