Lord Alton of Liverpool – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool on 2016-01-12.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they and the EU will place targeted human rights sanctions on individuals suspected of crimes against humanity in North Korea.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
We remain deeply concerned by the appalling human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Without security and stability on the Korean Peninsula and the denuclearisation of the DPRK we are unlikely to see genuine improvements in the human rights situation within that country. This is why the British Government’s priorities of an improved human rights situation and denuclearised DPRK are pursued in parallel. Following the nuclear test of 6 January, we are working closely with other members of the UN Security Council on a robust, and united, international response to the DPRK’s latest violation of existing UN Security Council Resolutions 1718, 1874, 2087 and 2094. These negotiations are on-going and we expect any new resolution to contain further measures that send a clear signal that DPRK’s actions will no longer be tolerated. We will continue to consider a range of available options, whenever we discuss DPRK with international partners.
We will continue to deliver the same strong messages on human rights directly to the regime through our Embassy in Pyongyang and in the UK where, most recently, the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), told the DPRK Ambassador on 7 January, that DPRK resources would be better directed toward improving the lives of its citizens rather than recklessly pursuing its development of nuclear weapons. We also work multilaterally on human rights, through the EU and the UN, where we support the annual UN Third Committee resolution on DPRK Human Rights.
