The US has dropped a bid to hold a UN Security Council meeting on North Korea’s human rights record after failing to garner enough support for the talks, diplomats said on Friday.
The decision to scrap the meeting held every year since 2014 also came as the US is seeking a second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea had written to council members last month to urge them to block the US request for the meeting that shines a spotlight on Pyongyang’s dismal record.
The US has, every year since 2014, garnered the nine votes needed at the council to hold the meeting, despite opposition from China.
However, diplomats said that only eight countries supported the US request this year, with non-permanent member Ivory Coast refusing to bow to pressure to lend its backing.
China, which has strong expanding ties in Africa, has argued that the UN Security Council is not the venue to discuss human rights as a threat to international peace and security.
Beijing has said it should be raised in the Geneva, Switzerland-based UN Human Rights Council.
Every year, China has requested a procedural vote, but failed to derail the meeting due to the nine “yes” votes secured by the US.
“They don’t have the numbers this year,” a UN Security Council diplomat told reporters.
“Cote d’Ivoire is not on board,” he added, using the official name of Ivory Coast.
The meeting had been tentatively set for tomorrow.
However, a US official suggested that the meeting could still take place at a later date, but not this month, when Ivory Coast holds the monthly rotating presidency of the UN Security Council.
“If we are unable to hold this important discussion this month, we hope to revisit holding this meeting in the new year,” the official said.
“We continue to believe that discussions on human rights — and particularly concerning human rights abuses in North Korea — are a crucial part of the maintenance of international peace and security and worthy of the UN Security Council’s attention,” they said.
North Korean Ambassador to the UN Kim Song last month told council members in a letter that criticism of Pyongyang’s human rights record would “swim against the current trend” of rapprochement and “stoke confrontation.”
A historic summit between Trump and Kim in June opened up dialogue on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula between the two countries after months of military threats.
A second summit is expected to be held next year, but North Korea has taken few concrete steps to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The UN Security Council has slapped a series of tough economic sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear tests and ballistic missile firings.
The US maintains that UN sanctions would remain in place until North Korea has fully scrapped its weapons programs.
A landmark 2014 report by a UN Commission of Inquiry documented human rights abuses on an appalling scale in North Korea, describing a vast network of prison camps where detainees are subjected to torture, starvation and summary executions.
The report accused Kim of atrocities and concluded that he could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
North Korea has rejected the report as a fabrication based on testimony from dissidents living in exile.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS