Human Rights Council 47th Session of the Universal Periodic Review – Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Mr President,

We welcome the delegation from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and acknowledge the country’s ongoing cooperation with the UPR. We are deeply concerned by State-sanctioned practices that breach fundamental human rights, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced abortion, and sexual and gender-based violence

New Zealand recommends that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:

1. Put an immediate stop to all public executions and abolish the death penalty in all cases, including urgently reversing the five new charges that have been declared punishable by death under the Law on Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture in 2024. 
2. Ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and its Optional Protocol. 
3. Decriminalise the rightful exercise of fundamental freedoms, free from State-sanctioned surveillance and monitoring, including the freedoms of expression, movement both domestically and internationally, education and information.
4. Positively engage with UN human rights treaty bodies, and strengthen coordination at the national level to ensure implementation of the human rights treaties to which the DPRK is a State Party.

Thank you Mr President.