By stepping back from an annual UN resolution on North Korean human rights, Tokyo is sending a signal to Pyongyang.
Japan has taken a tentative step toward dialogue with North Korea by deciding against tabling a United Nations resolution condemning the regime’s human rights record. It was the first time in more than a decade that Tokyo had not backed such a resolution.
Since 2007, Japan has joined with the European Union to draft a motion on Pyongyang’s rights abuses and present it to the UN Human Rights Council each year. However, the Japanese government announced on March 13 that it would not submit such a proposal this year, after it undertook a “comprehensive examination of the outcome of the second U. S.-North Korean summit and the situations surrounding the abduction and other issues.”
Japanese media cited government sources as saying the move was intended to signal Tokyo’s intention to resume bilateral talks with Pyongyang, noting that the North Korean regime was sensitive about human rights-related criticism.
The previous motion – adopted by consensus in March 2018 at a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva – served as a wide-ranging denunciation of the regime’s record.
The resolution condemned “in the strongest terms the long-standing and ongoing systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations and other human rights abuses committed in and by” North Korea, including enforced disappearances and persecution on political, religious and gender grounds.
