NGOs protest North Korean chairmanship of Conference on Disarmament

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres addresses the Conference on Disarmament’s High-Level Segment 2019 on Feb. 25, 2019 in Geneva. [UN]

Thirty UN-accredited nongovernmental organizations called on world democracies to protest North Korea’s upcoming chairmanship of the Conference on Disarmament (CD), comparing it to a “serial rapist in charge of a women’s shelter.”

The joint statement on Thursday came days before Pyongyang is expected to lead the world disarmament forum in a rotational one-month presidency that lasts four weeks from May 30 to June 24.

Established in 1979, the 65-member UN-backed CD reports to the UN General Assembly and is billed by the UN as “the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.” In the past, the conference negotiated several major disarmament agreements such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

North Korea’s ambassador to the forum, Han Tae-song, will be in charge of organizing the work of the conference, assisting in settling the agenda and representing the body in its relations with member countries, as well as with the UN General Assembly.

In a statement, the UN-backed NGOs called on UN Secretary General António Guterres, the United States, Canada, Britain, EU countries and other democracies “to strongly protest, and for their ambassadors to walk out of the conference” during the four weeks of the North Korean presidency.

“This is a country that threatens to attack other UN member states with missiles, and that commits atrocities against its own people,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO that monitors the UN, and who is spearheading the joint protest.

“Torture and starvation are routine in North Korean political prison camps, where an estimated 100,000 people are held in what is one of the world’s most dire human-rights situations,” said Neuer.

Neuer continued that any country that flagrantly disregards UN Security Council resolutions explicitly prohibiting its ballistic missile launches should be banned from any formal positions in UN bodies dealing with nuclear weapons disarmament.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]