UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council pushed ahead with a meeting to discuss Pyongyang's human rights abuses Friday after China failed to block it from the agenda.
Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, the U.N.'s second-in-command, welcomed the meeting, calling the human rights situation in North Korea a "matter of grave concern" and telling the council that the patterns of such violations have "repeatedly been established."
The Security Council's meeting Friday was the third ever to discuss human rights in the reclusive nation. A meeting on the issue first reached the council's agenda in December 2014 after a U.N. panel tasked with investigating North Korea published its groundbreaking Commission of Inquiry report. The report found the nature of North Korea's human rights violations "reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," and that many of the abuses amount to crimes against humanity.
Despite the gravity of the violations outlined in the report, Pyongyang's closest ally and permanent council member China has consistently tried to stem discussion of the issue by the council.
The council took a procedural vote after Liu Jieyi, China's ambassador to the U.N., told members that the Security Council is an inappropriate venue for discussing human rights, "and still less, the politicization of human rights issues."
"Given the current context where a plethora of dire challenges are confronting international peace and security," Liu said, "the council should scrupulously honor its responsibility and focus on issues concerning international peace and security with undivided attention."
Samantha Power, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N., supported the meeting, asserting that North Korea's human rights violations constitute a threat to international peace and security.
"As we've 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," Power said. Debating whether human rights should be discussed by the council distracts from North Korea's "catastrophic" situation and "what we can do to change it," she said.
Security Council rules require at least nine votes from the 15 members to adopt the agenda. In a push led by the U.S. and Japan, nine voted in favor of the meeting. China, Russia, Angola, Venezuela and Egypt were opposed, while Senegal abstained.
The council adopted a resolution less than two weeks ago slapping additional punitive sanctions on Pyongyang in a unanimous response to the country's latest nuclear weapons test. It was the first such resolution to include language on the necessity for North Korea to respect and ensure "the welfare and inherent dignity of people" in the country.
