Through international conferences and advocacy campaigns around the world, NKHR has worked to raise global awareness of North Korea’s human rights situation and to draw the attention of the United Nations, the media, governments, and international NGOs (INGOs). Our organization conducts regular human rights advocacy at UN offices in New York and Geneva, building international support for key UN resolutions and mechanisms on North Korean human rights, including the UN Special Rapporteur and the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI).
Since its founding in 1996, NKHR has been at the forefront of efforts to improve human rights in North Korea.
We also provide field-based information on the situation in North Korea to experts from the UN Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. In addition, NKHR interviews families of persons abducted to North Korea during and after the Korean War to help determine their fate, and continuously submits petitions to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID). NKHR also carries out a wide range of activities to raise international awareness of North Korea’s dire human rights situation, encouraging governments, international organizations, civil society, and NGOs—particularly in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America—to engage with the issue of North Korean human rights.