UN experts warn of grave abuses against Persons with Disabilities in North Korea by UN Human Rights Office, agencies Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)   Sep. 2025   DPRK: UN report finds 10 years of increased suffering, repression and fear. (OHCHR)   The human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has not improved over the past decade and, in many instances, has degraded, bringing even more suffering to the population.   Covering the period following the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry, the latest findings point to the introduction of more laws, policies and practices that are subjecting citizens to increased surveillance and control in all parts of life.   “No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” the report concludes, pointing to the remarks of one escapee who recounted, ‘to block the people’s eyes and ears, they strengthened the crackdowns. It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint’.   In 2025, the country remains more closed than at almost any other time in its history, it reads, adding: “The human rights landscape cannot be divorced from the broader isolation that the State is currently pursuing.”   A significant aspect of the report is the link between the degrading human rights situation in the DPRK, the country’s increasing self-imposed isolation and the peace and security situation on the Korean Peninsula.   “What we have witnessed is a lost decade,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said. “And it pains me to say that if DPRK continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long.”   The report says political prison camps continue to operate. The fate of the hundreds of thousands of disappeared people, including abducted foreign nationals of the Republic of Korea, Japan and elsewhere, remains unknown.   Citizens continue to be subjected to unremitting propaganda by the State for their entire lives. The right to food continues to be violated, with some State policies exacerbating hunger.   Today, the death penalty is more widely allowed by law and implemented in practice. Enjoyment of freedom of expression and access to information have significantly regressed, with the implementation of severe new punishments, including the death penalty, for a range of acts including the sharing of foreign media such as TV dramas. The surveillance of the population has become even more pervasive, aided by advances in technology.   The report, which is based on hundreds of interviews by the Office along with supporting materials, points to the increased use of forced labour in many forms, particularly so-called “shock brigades”, usually deployed to take on physically demanding and hazardous sectors such as mining and construction. They often come from poorer families and in recent years, the Government has used thousands of orphans and street children in coal mines and at other hazardous sites and for extensive hours.   The UN Human Rights Office continues to document human rights violations, some of which may amount to international crimes, while the State has no independent institutions or processes to ensure accountability and provide victims with effective remedies..   http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165837 http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/09/blocking-peoples-eyes-and-ears-human-rights-violations-democratic-peoples-republic http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc6058-situation-human-rights-democratic-peoples-republic-korea-report   UN experts warn of grave abuses against Persons with Disabilities in North Korea   On 3 September the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) issued its findings on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), following the country’s review during the Committee’s latest session.   The CRPD expressed grave concern over credible reports of systematic abuses against persons with disabilities. These include accounts of infanticide of children with disabilities, sometimes carried out in medical facilities with official consent, forced abortions and sterilizations and medical experimentation.   The CRPD condemned the DPRK’s eugenic and discriminatory medical policies, which under the guise of “disability prevention,” infringe on the right to life of persons with disabilities.   The risks faced by persons with disabilities in the DPRK are further compounded by gender and age. Women and children with disabilities are subjected to gender-based and sexual violence, including coerced marriage, abduction, trafficking and rape. The CRPD noted the absence of legal protections, adequate investigative mechanisms, support services and prevention efforts, leaving survivors without access to justice or redress.   Although DPRK authorities have taken some formal steps toward protecting disability rights since 2016, including ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, hosting the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and accepting relevant recommendations during its third and fourth Universal Periodic Reviews, a significant gap remains between its international commitments and domestic implementation.   For instance, national legislation does not explicitly guarantee the right to life for persons with disabilities, including those in detention and healthcare settings, where they face heightened risks of medical neglect, starvation and abuse without independent oversight.   Human rights abuses and restrictions on fundamental freedoms targeting persons with disabilities are inseparable from the DPRK’s broader system of discrimination and persecution.   Julia Saltzman, DPRK expert at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, said, “The systematic enforcement of discriminatory and exclusionary policies affecting persons with disabilities in the DPRK is not incidental but a tool of state repression, embedded within broader patterns of indoctrination, discrimination and persecution. These policies and practices occur within a pervasive climate of gross human rights violations and impunity that often amount to crimes against humanity.”   The DPRK should amend its constitution and domestic legislation to guarantee equality and non-discrimination for persons with disabilities, as well as adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination law that includes effective remedies and protections. The government must take a gender-sensitive approach, including measures to prevent gender-based and sexual violence, and expand access to support services for women with disabilities. It should also permit independent monitoring and grant full access to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant UN Special Procedures.   http://www.globalr2p.org/publications/atrocity-alert-no-449/ http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=2795&Lang=en http://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/crpd Visit the related web page
	Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide by UN News, OHCHR, agencies   16 Sep. 2025   Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council alleged on Tuesday that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Israeli Government officials.   In a new report published against the backdrop of intensifying Israeli military operations in Gaza City, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, urged Israel and all countries to fulfil their obligations under international law “to end the genocide” and punish those responsible.   “The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”   Israel's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Danny Meron, dismissed the Commission's "cherry-picked" findings saying the report sought to demonize the state of Israel. "The report falsely accuses Israel of genocidal intent, an allegation it cannot substantiate."   At a press conference in Geneva, the Commission of Inquiry's members Ms. Pillay and Chris Sidoti - who are appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 47 Member States - explained that their investigations into the war in Gaza beginning with Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023 had led to the conclusion that Israeli authorities and security forces “committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.   These acts are: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.   Ms. Pillay maintained that responsibility for the atrocity crimes “lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons”, amid “explicit statements” denigrating Palestinians by Israeli civilian and military authorities.   The Commission also analysed conduct of Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces in Gaza, “including imposing starvation and inhumane conditions of life for Palestinians in Gaza… genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be concluded from the nature of their operations”, the panel said.   The Commission’s assertion follows its review of Israeli military operations in Gaza, “including killing and seriously harming unprecedented numbers of Palestinians” and the imposition of a “total siege, including blocking humanitarian aid leading to starvation”, it said.   According to the UN aid coordination wing, OCHA, nearly one million people remain in Gaza City, famine has been confirmed there, and residents face daily bombardment and “compromised access to means of survival after the Israeli military placed the entire city under a displacement order”.   For its latest report, the panel also examined what it called the “systematic destruction” of healthcare and education in Gaza and “systematic” acts of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians.   In addition, the Commission of Inquiry reviewed Israel’s “disregarding of the orders of the International Court of Justice, which issued an order in March 2024 that Israel should take ‘all necessary and effective measures to ensure… the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians throughout Gaza’”.   “The international community cannot stay silent when clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she added. “All States are under a legal obligation to use all means that are reasonably available to them to stop the genocide in Gaza.”   http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165856 http://news.un.org/en/tags/gaza http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds http://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/16/middleeast/israel-gaza-genocide-un-commission-report-intl http://www.sanders.senate.gov/op-eds/it-is-genocide http://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5543246/israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza-a-un-inquiry-says http://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go http://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/chris-sidoti-gaza-israel-genocide-un-report/105781524 http://www.haaretz.com/deepdive/gazahumanitariancrisis   Gaza: Leaders of major aid groups call on world leaders to intervene following UN genocide conclusion   The leaders of over 20 major aid agencies working in Gaza are calling on world leaders to urgently intervene after a UN commission concluded, for the first time, that genocide is being committed. The statement is below:   As world leaders convene next week at the United Nations, we are calling on all member states to act in accordance with the mandate the UN was charged with 80 years ago.   What we are witnessing in Gaza is not only an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, but what the UN Commission of Inquiry has now concluded is a genocide. With this finding, the Commission joins a growing number of human rights organisations and leaders globally, and within Israel.   The inhumanity of the situation in Gaza is unconscionable. As humanitarian leaders, we have borne direct witness to the horrifying deaths and suffering of the people of Gaza. Our warnings have gone unheeded and thousands more lives are still at stake.   Now, as the Israeli government has ordered the mass displacement of Gaza City – home to nearly one million people – we are on the precipice of an even deadlier period in Gaza’s story if action is not taken. Gaza has been deliberately made uninhabitable.   Some 65,000 Palestinians have now been killed, including more than 20,000 children, and 164,000 injured. Thousands more are missing, buried under the rubble that has replaced Gaza’s once lively streets.   Nine out of 10 people in Gaza’s 2.1 million population have been forcibly displaced — most of them multiple times — into increasingly shrinking pockets of land that cannot sustain human life.   More than half a million people are starving. Famine has been declared and is spreading. The cumulative impact of hunger and physical deprivation means people are dying every day.   Throughout Gaza, entire cities have been razed to the ground, along with their life-sustaining public infrastructure, such as hospitals and water treatment plants. Agricultural land has been systemically destroyed.   If the facts and numbers aren’t enough, we have harrowing story upon harrowing story.   Since the Israeli military tightened its siege six months ago, blocking food, fuel, and medicine, we witnessed children and families waste away from starvation as famine took hold. Our colleagues too have been impacted.   Many of us have been into Gaza. We have met countless Palestinians who have lost limbs as a result of Israel’s bombardment. We have personally met children so traumatized by daily airstrikes that they cannot sleep. Some cannot speak. Others have told us they want to die to join their parents in heaven.   We have met families who eat animal food to survive and boil leaves as a meal for their children.   Yet world leaders fail to act. Facts are ignored. Testimony is cast aside. And more people are killed as a direct consequence.   Our organisations, together with Palestinian civil society groups, the UN, and Israeli human rights organisations, can only do so much. We have tirelessly tried to defend the rights of the people of Gaza and sustain humanitarian assistance, but we are being obstructed every step of the way.   We have been denied access, and the militarization of the aid system has proved deadly. Thousands of people have been shot at while trying to reach the handful of sites where food is distributed under armed guard.   Governments must act to prevent the evisceration of life in the Gaza Strip, and to end the violence and occupation. All parties must disavow violence against civilians, adhere to international humanitarian law and pursue peace.   States must use every available political, economic, and legal tool at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half measures are not enough. This moment demands decisive action.   The UN enshrined international law as the cornerstone of global peace and security. If Member States continue to treat these legal obligations as optional, they are not only complicit but are setting a dangerous precedent for the future. History will undoubtedly judge this moment as a test of humanity. And we are failing. Failing the people of Gaza, failing the hostages, and failing our own collective moral imperative.   * Action for Humanity, ActionAid, American Friends Service Committee, American Near East Refugee Aid, CARE, DanChurchAid, Danish Refugee Council, Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion, International Council of Voluntary Agencies, Islamic Relief, Médecins du Monde, Médecins Sans Frontières, MedGlobal, Mennonite Central Committee, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, People in Need, Save the Children, Terre des hommes, War Child International   http://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-leaders-major-aid-groups-call-world-leaders-intervene-following-un-genocide-conclusion http://reliefweb.int/country/pse http://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-failure-un-security-council-pass-ceasefire-resolution-abdication-legal-and-moral http://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/countries-in-focus-archive/issue-134/en/ http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1o/k1ogmhm1vv Visit the related web page
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