YouSaid · the spoken record

Power

lines on the record: 1,841
first: 2013-08-06
most recent: 2019-07-09
sittings or episodes: 165
sources: un-security-council

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“The atrocities in South Sudan and the displacement into neighbouring countries are increasing every day. A number of false arguments have been made in recent days, and I would just like to address them head-on. Some have said that this draft resolution should have imposed either an arms embargo or targeted sanctions, but not both. They argued that putting both the arms embargo and the designations into the same draft resolution was costing us votes and that we might be able to get the draft resolution adopted if we just submitted a clean arms embargo or clean designations. That isjust false.”
2016-12-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7850 (2016) · source
“This should not have been a contentions draft resolution (S/2016/1085). The United States proposed a draft resolution meant to show that the architects of mass atrocities and those who defy the demands of the Security Council day in and day would face consequences. We urged members of the Council to stand with South Sudan's people, who are suffering immesely due to the actions of their leaders. And we urged that we use an arms embargo and targeted sanctions to help end the culture of impunity and reduce - at least - the violence. We are grateful to those who supported this effort. Some Council members decided to prevent the Council from acting, from heeding the pleas of the Secretary-General, who has been appealing for these steps for more than a year. History is going to be a very hard judge of their decision.”
2016-12-23 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7850 (2016) · source
“Members of the Council will need to raise their hands and make a decision on where they stand on the issues of life and death that have been raised by the Secretary- General and by everyone who goes to South Sudan and comes back. Above all, the people of South Sudan have a stake in our action. Council members - each of us - will need to own our decisions, so the United States urges members to prepare to vote your conscience and to vote to stand with the people of South Sudan.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“If the Council is unprepared to act on such designations, can that sense of impunity be good for our people on the ground, our workers, our peacekeepers and our aid workers? It can not be. How is impunity good? How are more arms good for the safety of our people? However, well beyond that, what about the South Sudanese people? Do they get a vote? How would they vote on such measures? We heard them when we met with a wide range of civil society and other actors. We know how they would vote, and we need to keep their votes in mind. We need to bring this draft resolution at last to a vote, which we will do by the end of this year.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“But can we really believe - those of us who care about our people - can we really believe that more arms coming into the country is the way to look out for their safety? Can we really believe that allowing the Government of South Sudan to continue to invest its money in such weapons systems, instead of in the food that people need to eat, is the best way to look out for our people? The people that we are hoping to designate are people whose public statements no one disputes - they are on the record, advertising their statements aimed at ethnicizing the conflict and spoiling whatever hope there is to get back to a peace agreement. Those individuals feel a sense of impunity.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“However, to use those promises as an excuse to delay action, when we hear from the Secretary-General so powerfully about what is happening on the ground, when he has been banging his head against this table for so long, for more than a year, asking for such measures to try to mitigate the violence, we have no more alibis. Some Council members have been pretty direct about expressing concerns about the risks that imposing those measures would pose to their peacekeepers or to their workers who are on the ground in South Sudan. Every Government has a responsibility to look out for their citizens, and I very much appreciate that concern, as we also, of course, have many aid workers and embassy personnel who are there in South Sudan.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“Some on this Council argue that it is not the right time to impose an arms embargo and targeted sanctions. Some point to the public statements and nice words from Government officials that say that we need to give the Government yet another chance. Another chance? We have seen citizens in South Sudan go hungry as money gets invested in large weapons systems. We have seen the deployment of peacekeepers stalled. It is late December. We were there in early September. Not one soldier of the RPF has been deployed - not one soldier. Of course, we join others in hoping that our dear friends in South Sudan, with whom we have worked so closely and for whom we worked to secure their independence, will follow through on their recent promises, just as we had hoped that they would follow through on previous promises.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“History is going to show what each of us did and where each of us stood when the sirens were blaring and when the red lights were flashing in South Sudan. Now is when each of us has to be counted. Where were we when the lights flashed red for the people of South Sudan? In some parts of South Sudan, ethnic killings are already underway. Every day, we hear vows to take revenge on the airwaves, as the number of killings increases and as the cycle of Violence escalates. In Central Equatoria, at least 1,900 structures - houses, businesses, schools - have been destroyed since the fighting began two months ago. The Government has mobilized at least 4,000 militia from other areas and staged them in Equatoria. We know that large-scale attacks could start at any moment. Let me wrap up with a closing argument on this incredibly important issue.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“The warnings are everywhere. We have all heard them. The Commission on human rights in South Sudan has said that South Sudan is on the brink of an all-out ethnic civil war. The Special Adviser of the Secretary-General for the Prevention of Genocide, Ms. Adama Dieng, who is sitting right here with the rest of us, has warned of a "strong risk of violence escalating along ethnic lines with the potential for genocide". Nobody here can say that things have gotten better since Adama Dieng briefed us. We have just heard from the Secretary-General and Mr. Stephen O'Brien that things have gotten worse. The people within the United Nations system whose job it is to sound the alarm have sounded it.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“In recent weeks, South Sudan's authorities have again imposed restrictions on UNMISS patrols around the Equatorias, as well as in areas outside Wau and in the region of Bahr el Ghazal - two places where we know that people are in need of protection. Yet, we see more obstruction and more defiance of the Council's resolutions. The problem right now for us in taking this wait- and-see posture is that South Sudan, as the Secretary- General put it in his extraordinary briefing, may be running out of time. Even if we could deploy the entire RPF tomorrow and even if UNMISS faced no obstruction of any kind, those peacekeepers would face immense challenges in stopping the escalating, ethnically based violence that we are witnessing on the ground. The Council needs to do much more to respond to the growing risk ofmass atrocities.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“Since then, the Government has talked a lot about allowing the RPF to deploy, and they have expressed some type of consent to the RPF in statements and letters at least six times - we only know about six times. How often have they consented? They consented on 4 September, 20 September, 15 October, 16 October, 16 November and 30 November. However, none of those letters of consent or words of consent has translated into consent on the ground and deployment, which is the measure ofwhether our will as a Council is being respected. Again, we are witnessing obstruction and defiance. The South Sudan Government has also offered assurance that UNMISS can patrol without interference. That is part of what the Council has rightly asked for. However, in reality, we know that is not happening.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“Again, for those who think that the situation is getting better or is static, I have bad news. The United Nations recorded more obstructions to humanitarian assistance last month than during any other month since June 2015. We see more obstructions to humanitarian assistance and yet, we sit here doing more of the same and expect a different result, which is the definition of insanity. South Sudan is making it harder for people to get aid, even as the Council has done the right thing in demanding unfettered access. The Government is obstructing and defying. In August, we tried to mitigate the violence by authorizing the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Regional Protection Force (RPF). I express thanks to all Council members who supported the Force.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“Consider the Government's unfortunate response: continued obstruction of assistance and defiance of the demands of the Council. As we have heard, in recent weeks, the Government deported four highly experienced aid workers with no apparent justification, including the country directors for two very large non-governmental organizations. We also have to talk about the opposition. The Sudan People's Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) is making it even harder for humanitarian agencies to operate in the areas that they control. Non-governmental organizations now need to petition the SPLA-IO for accreditation, which requires a fee. Then they have to give at least 48 hours notice of any humanitarian flight before arrival. That is now common practice across the country. It makes it impossible to deliver food to people who need it.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“In the town of Yei, blockaded civilians cannot venture out of the city into their fields, so the crops that would feed them rot away. That is what is happening right now. In the Equatorias, which in one stage of the conflict had not seen violence, the threat of violence is now so extreme that the only way to flee the city is by crawling through the bush, because soldiers and armed groups who rape and murder control the roads. In Unity state, one rape victim told the Commission on human rights in South Sudan, "there is no stigma around rape because for us it is normal. It is happening every day to us." Those Council members who were on the trip to South Sudan heard those testimonies at first hand. That should not surprise us.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“I say that much more in sorrow than in anger, given how closely the United States has worked with that Government and how closely the United States has wanted to work with that Government, even throughout this crisis. Three million people have been displaced inside and outside South Sudan and more than half of the country faces food insecurity. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, has reported that violations of human rights are so widespread that they have become almost commonplace. As we have heard from all the visitors who go to various parts of South Sudan, violations includes the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. What does that actually mean to the people in the country?”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“That is this week. That is not back in July or back when the conflict started in 2013. The situation is not getting better, but worse. Meanwhile, we are sitting on our hands as a Council. We have to try to stop atrocities in South Sudan, and the question is not whether we should do that, but rather how quickly we can do that. We have to adopt an arms embargo, targeted sanctions - the tools in the toolbox that we have. If people have better ideas, then we are open to better ideas, but more of the same is not working. Violence is tearing South Sudan apart, and the Government undermines virtually all international efforts to help.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“Irene fled for the Ugandan border but ran into another group of armed men. As she relayed to a journalist, two women were trapped and raped by the men. The men took two infants and used them as if they were sticks to beat the women. The children survived but they were damaged inside. That account is so graphic and so terrible and yet, the number of accounts from the region that have that kind of gory, savage detail is too large to count. Babies used as clubs to beat their own mothers, rape, the execution of a woman's husband - that is what Irene witnessed before getting to Uganda and the relative safety ofa refugee camp. That is just one story over the past week -just this week. For Council members who were saying that things are getting better, they should know that an average of 5,189 refugees like Irene stream into Uganda every day.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“We should try to retrieve that unity in light of the Secretary-General's warning, which will go down as one of his last warnings to this Council. If we fail to act, South Sudan will be on a trajectory towards mass atrocities. The Secretary-General has said it. We have to admit that, as a Security Council - each and every one of us. I would just add an account of one family that has been affected by the conflict, the matriarch of which is 28 year-old, Irene, a mother from Yei River state. She and her children barely escaped death on two occasions. The first time, she was reportedly at home when armed men came to her door and called out her husband's name. Irene's husband had just managed to push her and the kids under their bed before the soldiers kicked down the door and shot him in the head.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“I thank Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for showing his deep dedication to the people of South Sudan by being here today and injecting his passion and compassion for the people of a country that he has visited many times. I want to begin my remarks by apologizing to the Secretary-General, because I do not know how long he has been asking for an arms embargo and targeted sanctions. It is not every day that he comes to the Security Council and is very specific about his prescriptions. Yet, in the case of South Sudan, he has asked, and we have not delivered. I think that is something upon which we need to reflect in light of the graphic nature of the briefings that we have heard and the first-hand eyewitness testimonies that we have read, by which we have been horrified. South Sudan used to be an issue on which the Council was pretty unified.”
2016-12-19 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7846 (2016) · source
“This is not the time for more equivocation, for self-censoring, to avoid naming names, for diplomatic niceties of the kind that are so well-practiced here in the Council. Say who is responsible. Appeal to Moscow, to Damascus, to Tehran that they have to stop. Use every public and private channel available and bank shot off someone who knows someone. The lives of tens of thousands of Syrians still in eastern Aleppo - between 30,000 and 60,000 people - and hundreds ofthousands more across the country who are besieged depend on it.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“The regime and its Russian allies will only be emboldened to replicate their starve-and- surrender-and-slaughter tactics elsewhere. This will be their model for attempting to retake cities and towns across Syria. It will not end with Aleppo, and it will not focus on terrorists. It never has, and there is no evidence that it will. No matter how small a country, no matter its view of sovereignty, if it shares our view that terrorism is one of the singular causes on Earth that is worth fighting, it is essential that each of us shoulder our responsibility to denounce these atrocities. We have just heard the Secretary-General state it plainly. We have to tell those responsible that they must stop.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Their barrel bombs, mortars and air strikes have allowed the militias in Aleppo to encircle tens of thousands of civilians in their ever-tightening noose. It is their noose - three States Members of the United Nations contributing to a noose around civilians. It should shame them. Instead, by all appearances, it is emboldening them; they are plotting their next assault. Are they truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame them? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution ofa child that gets under their skin or just creeps them out a little bit? Is there nothing that they will not lie about or justify? To the members of the Council and all States Members of the United Nations, I say that the ghastly attacks that we are witnessing in Aleppo will not stop if the city falls.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Denying or obfuscating the facts, as they will do today, by saying that up is down and black is white will not absolve them. When one day there is a full accounting of the horrors committed in this assault of Aleppo - and that day will come sooner or later - those countries will not be able to say that they did not know what was happening and were not involved. We will all know what was happening, and we will all know that they were involved. Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil and stain or conscious decades later: Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica and now Aleppo. To the Al-Assad regime, Russia and Iran, I say to them that their forces and proxies are carrying out these crimes.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“But we keep insisting on answering the United Nations call for access and safe and orderly evacuation, because we are not willing to accept that innocent men, women and children can be butchered simply because they happen to live in a conflict area. Our shared humanity and security demand that certain rules of war - the most basic - hold. It is up to each and every one of us here to defend those rules. To the Al-Assad regime, Russia and Iran, three Member States behind the conquest of and carnage in Aleppo, I say that they bear responsibility for these atrocities. By rejecting the evacuation efforts of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross they are signalling to those militias that are massacring innocents to continue doing what they are doing.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“In the light of these reports, we join others - and especially the Secretary-General in one of his final appeals, in reiterating our call to the Al-Assad regime and Russia to stop their assaults on Aleppo - to protect civilians. We call on Russia and Al-Assad to allow impartial international observers into the city to oversee the safe evacuation of the people who wish to leave but justifiably fear that if they try, they will be shot in the street or carted off to one of Al-Assad's gulags. The Al-Assad regime and Russia appear dead set on seizing every last square inch of Aleppo by force no matter how many innocent bodies pile up in their wake.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Just in the past 24 hours, pro-Al-Assad forces reportedly killed at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children. Those forces are reportedly entering homes and executing civilians on the spot, as we have heard. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, foreign militias, such as the Iraqi Harakat Al-Nujaba organization, are involved in those killings. Where civilians are able to run the gauntlet and make it across the front lines, Syrian intelligence agencies are pulling people aside and sending them away, perhaps to be gang-pressed to the front lines or likely to the same prisons in which we know the Al-Assad regime tortures and executes those in its custody.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Bodies lie in the streets of eastern Aleppo, but nobody dares collect them for fear of getting bombed or shot to death in the process. As many as a 100 children are reportedly trapped right now in a building under heavy fire. Clearly, those young children must be terrorists, because all those who are being executed, everybody being barrel-bombed, everybody who has been attacked with chlorine gas - Council members will be told they are all terrorists, every last one, even the infants. The regime of Bashar Al-Assad, Russia, Iran and their affiliated militias are the ones responsible for what the United Nations calls a complete meltdown of humanity. And they are showing no mercy, even now, despite their territorial conquests.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“The Al-Assad regime and Russia, backed by Iran, using militias on the ground, have done everything that they can to cut off the city. The Security Council will hear "Well, we do not really know. Maybe it is made up." But they are hiding what is happening from the world. It would be easy for independent investigators to get in, along with food, health workers and others. Instead, the perpetrators are hiding their brutal assault from the world wilfully. But consider the many accounts that have made it out, so many of them - those of first responders describing children's voices from beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings. There are no first responders or equipment left to dig them out, and no doctors left to treat them.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“This is a call from a father." Another doctor told a journalist, "Remember that there was a city called Aleppo that the world erased from the map and history." This is what is happening in eastern Aleppo. This is what is being done by States Members of the United Nations that are sitting around this horseshoe table today. This is what is being done to the people of eastern Aleppo - to fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, like each of us here. It is extremely hard to get information, of course, out ofthe small area still held by the opposition. We will hear that as an alibi and a way of papering over what video testimony, phone calls and others are bringing us live. We will hear it invoked, that it is hard to verify. It is deliberate.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Here is what is happening right now in eastern Aleppo. Syrians trapped by the fighting are sending out their final appeals for help, or they are saying their goodbyes. A doctor named Mohammad Abu Rajab left a voice message: "This is a final distress call to the world. Save the lives of these children, women and old men. Save them. Nobody is left. You might not hear our voice after this." A photographer named Amin Al-Halabi wrote on Facebook, "I am waiting to die or be captured by the Al-Assad regime. Pray for me and always remember us." A teacher named Abdel Kafi Alhamdo said, "I can tweet now, but I might not do it forever. Please save my daughter's life and others.”
2016-12-13 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7834 (2016) · source
“Do they try to organize neighbours or co-workers to change the dreadful living or labour conditions? They go to the prison camps. Do they flee for a better life and get caught? They go to the prison camps. Yet we, who risk so little by speaking up on behalf of people who suffer so much, have so many ways in which we can help change the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Do we not owe it to those people trapped in North Korea to at least try? Would we not want others to do the same if we were in their place?”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“Member States can also meet their obligations under the Security Council sanctions resolution, particularly the new restrictions on coal exports, given what we know about the harrowing conditions in the Government-run mines. Member States can stop repatriating the people who managed to escape North Korea, knowing the likelihood that those who are returned will be sent to the gulags. These are steps that we can take; they are within our control. We could save so many lives simply by not repatriating people who make it across an international border, believing that they are finally going to be free of those harrowing conditions. The people of North Korea have so little power to change the nightmarish conditions in which they live, and they risk so much by trying. Do they speak up about not having enough to eat? They go to the prison camps.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“The Security Council also has important role to play, not just by continuing to hold meetings like this one on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but also by considering the recommendation by the commission of inquiry that the situation in North Korea be referred to the International Criminal Court. We must also consider other appropriate options on accountability, as Member States urged the Council to do just a few weeks ago in a draft resolution on human rights in North Korea that was adopted by consensus in the Third Committee (A/C.3/71/L.23). There is a great deal that individual Member States can do as well, including providing support for the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul, which is methodically gathering evidence of North Korea's human rights violations.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“They are Kim Jong-un; Choe Pu Il, Minister of People's Security; Ri Song Chol, Councillor in the Ministry of People's Security; Kang Song Nam, Bureau Director in the Ministry of State Security; Cho Yo'n-chun, First Vice Director of the Organization and Guidance Department; Kim Kyong-Un, First Vice Director of the Organization and Guidance Department; Kim Ki Nam, Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department; Ri Jae-il, First Vice Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department; Choc Chang Pang, Bureau Director in the Ministry of People's Security; Cho Il U of the Reconnaissance General Bureau; and O Chong Kuk of the Reconnaissance General Bureau.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“We can also seek sanctions for the individuals and entities responsible for such abuses, as the United States Department of the Treasury did in July by adding 11 senior officials and 5 entities to the list of nationals and blocked persons specially designated by the United States. I would like to read the names of those 11 individuals now.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“This is what the United States did on 6 July, when we released a report identifying 15 North Korean officials and 8 entities as responsible for or associated with human rights abuses and censorship. Our message to those officials and to all mid-level officers, including prison camp managers and guards, interrogators and defector- chasers, is clear. We are methodically documenting their abuses, and their impunity will not last forever. When the days comes that they are publicly held accountable, we will be ready. In the meantime, we will continue to collect evidence of their abuses and add names to the growing list.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“I urge other Council members to come and hear them speak. Some may look at the severity of the North Korea's oppression and the decades it has persisted and conclude that there is little we can do to change it. But that would be a mistake, for there is so much we can do. We can continue to shine a light on the abuses the regime commits, as we are doing here today. It is crucial that we keep holding meetings in the Security Council on the human rights situation in the North Korea every year for as long as this human rights crisis and its destabilizing effects persist. We can continue to press for accountability for the perpetrators and architects of those abuses.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“There are so many families in Japan and the Republic of Korea who have been forced to endure a similar nightmare as a result of the actions of the Democratic People's Republic: they wake up every day yearning to see a father or brother, a mother or daughter to whom they may not have spoken in years or even decades, and who, they worry, may be suffering terribly inside North Korea. Many fear they will never get to see them again. It is a pain that ripples across generations and is felt to this day. Immediately after this meeting today, the United States will co-host an event on this issue, together with the Republic of Korea, Japan and the United Kingdom, in Conference Room 1, where we will have a chance to hear directly from two people who are living through this searing separation.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“Megumi Yokota was just 13 years old when North Korean agents abducted her in Japan's Niigata prefecture in 1977. Her mother told me that nearly 40 years later, not a day goes by when she does not feel the overwhelming pain of being separated from her daughter: a pain made worse by not knowing her daughter's fate. As a mother myself, I cannot fathom the anguish of having my daughter taken away and not being able to find out what happened to her. It is every parent's worst nightmare, and it is a nightmare being lived daily by many families around the world.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“Another young defector in Seoul told me that her widowed mother, who also knew nothing in advance of her daughter's plans to flee, had been forced to move seven times by North Korean officials as punishment for what her daughter had done. She said her mother was so afraid of being uprooted again that she had stopped going outside unless she absolutely had to. Both of these young women, like so many others I met, expressed profound guilt - imagine that, guilt - for having added to their families' already crushing hardships and for leaving without saying goodbye. Almost all asked that I not write down their names for fear that speaking out would lead to even more reprisals by the regime against their loved ones. In Japan, I met with the mother and brother of one of the Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“In October, I traveled to the Republic of Korea and Japan, where I had the chance to meet directly with some of the affected families. The pain of separation was the common thread that ran through every one of my conversations. In South Korea I visited the Hanawon Resettlement Center, which tries to prepare recently arrived defectors from North Korea for their immersion into a completely different world, as well a school in Seoul for young defectors. One young woman I met in Hanawon spoke of how she had told no one - not even her parents - about her intention to flee North Korea. Yet even though her parents knew nothing of her plans, local officals went on to blame them anyway, hounding the family until they were forced to flee their home and go into hiding.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“This is one of the many reasons why the sanctions resolution 2321 (2016), adopted by the Security Council last week, is the first ever to state explicitly that the North Korean Government must respect and ensure the welfare and inherent dignity of people in its territory. So in 2016, let us end the debate on whether the human rights violations in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea constitute a threat to international peace and security. This debate distracts us from focusing on the catastrophic human rights situation in the that country and what we can do to change it. Today I would like to highlight one of the most devastating consequences of the actions of the Democratic People's Republic: the families that have been torn apart by the regime's abuses.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“Some were literally worked to death. The prison guards did not care. Ms. Kim, who spent 14 of her 28 years on this Earth in the camp, recalled that in the eyes of the guards the victims were "not even worth one ton of coal". Such harrowing conditions would be worthy of condemnation in any circumstance, but they are relevant to the discussion of international peace and security because, as we all know, coal exports account for one third of the total export revenue of the Democratic People's Republic - revenue that, according to resolutions adopted by this Council, is supposed to go to helping the North Korean people. However, that regime uses the revenue from working its people to death in these coal mines to build more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“According to the World Health Organization, one in every four children in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea suffers from stunted growth as a result of chronic malnutrition, and yet, while children in North Korea go hungry, the regime continues to channel the overwhelming majority of its resources into building up a weapons programme that the Council has repeatedly told it to stop. Let me give another example of how these two issues are linked. Last April, the United States hosted a meeting at the United Nations at which defectors shared their experiences. One of the speakers was Kim Hye-sook, who had been sent to the Bukchang political prison at the young age of 13, where all prisoners, including children, were forced to work 16- to 20-hour days in the coal mines. Many died in the camp, she said, including her husband and brother.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“As the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic ofKorea put it in its 2014 report, the situation still to this day "does not have any parallel in the contemporary world". As we have seen in other parts of the world, when Governments flagrantly violate the human rights of their own people, they almost always show similar disdain for the international norms that help ensure our shared security. We see the Democratic People's Republic of Korea regime grow its illicit weapons programme rather than growing its own children.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“I wish to thank all Council members that supported the holding of this meeting in order to address a grave crisis. I thank also Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson, whom we will miss, and assistant Secretary-General Gilmour for their appropriately bleak briefings. This is the third time that the Council is meeting to discuss human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. We first took up the issue in 2014, on the grounds that the widespread and systematic human rights violations being committed by the North Korean Government posed a threat to international peace and security. Unfortunately for the people of North Korea, the deplorable human rights situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea remains unchanged.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“The situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is on the Council's seizures list, and that is where it belongs. Therefore, with the delegations of eight other Security Council members, we requested this meeting today. We strongly support the adoption of the agenda, and we very much look forward to the discussion.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“It stretches credulity, really, to suggest - as I know some Council members will today - that the brutal governance practiced by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea regime is neutral on international peace and security. We know that nobody is saying that it is good for international peace and security, but the idea that it is neutral - that it is somehow a stable form of governance - is just clearly not true. It is inherently destabilizing when a regime carries out the kinds of horrors that this regime perpetrates against its own people, and given the other aspects of the threat to peace and security posed by its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, that nexus should worry us all. It really belongs on our agenda here in the Security Council.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“Just two days ago, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a report about the thousands of families torn apart because of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's repression and the instability it provokes in the region. This is only one piece of the crisis, of course, as has been noted. This year has seen an increasingly aggressive Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with a record number of missile launches and two nuclear tests. This behaviour affirms what we have long stated - when Governments flagrantly violate the human rights of their own people, they almost always show similar disdain for the international norms that help to ensure our shared security.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source
“In February 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry released its now famous report on human rights in North Korea (A/HRC/25/63), methodically documenting the widespread and systematic human rights violations carried out by the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In December 2014, Australia led the Council in holding its first meeting to discuss the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's human rights situation as a threat to international peace and security (S/PV.7353). In December 2015, we held our second meeting on this issue (see S/PV.7575). I think it goes without saying that there has been no improvement in the lives of the North Korean people.”
2016-12-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7830 (2016) · source