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	Children who end up in North Korean forced labor brigades live under terrible conditions by Human Rights Watch, IBA, agencies North Korea/Democratic People’s Republic of Korea   Feb. 2017   The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child should press the North Korean government to end the exploitation of children through forced labor and discrimination, Human Rights Watch and three Korean nongovernmental organizations said this week. During the week of February 6, 2017, Human Rights Watch, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), the New Korea Women’s Union, and the Caleb Mission will brief the pre-sessional working group of the committee in Geneva about the situation of children’s rights in North Korea.   Although the North Korean government claims to have abolished child labor 70 years ago, the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and other government agencies still require students and other children to take part in forced labor on behalf of the state.   Other human rights violations include government discrimination regarding access to education, abuses against children with mothers in third countries, corporal punishment at schools, and children compelled to work extended hours without pay in paramilitary forced labor brigades (known in Korean as dolgyeokdae).   “Forcing children to work is an egregious human rights abuse condemned worldwide, but for many North Korean students, it’s a part of their everyday life,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child should demand that Pyongyang tell the truth about these abusive practices and immediately bring them to a halt.”   The Committee on the Rights of the Child will hear the experiences of two North Korean teenagers who escaped the country. Jeon Hyo-Vin, 16, experienced forced labor in school almost daily, until she had to leave secondary school because of her family’s inability to pay the required cash payments. Kim Eun-Sol, 18, endured forced labor in school while she was a teenager. By age 13, she became an unpaid worker in a private home in order to survive since her grandmother could not support her. Her mother, who had left to earn a living in China, could not maintain contact with her daughter.   The committee reviews the compliance of each state party with its obligations under the Child Rights Convention, which North Korea has ratified.   Research conducted by the groups found that both the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Ministry of Education compelled labor from children in collaboration with schools and universities. They also made use of party wings such as the Korean Children’s Union (which students between the ages of 7 and 13 are required to join), and the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League (which is comprised of students between the ages of 14 and 30).   Schools, party wings, school administrators, and teachers required students to farm, to help construct buildings, statues, roads or railroads, and collect materials (for example, scrap metal, broken rocks, pebbles, rabbit skin, old paper) that could be used or sold by the school. If a student cannot meet the required quota for products collected, which happens in many cases, then the student is required to pay a cash penalty.   The North Korean government has also compelled numerous children after they finish mandatory school at age 16 or 17 to join paramilitary forced labor brigades, which are controlled and operated by the ruling party.   These brigades have a military-like structure, and work primarily on construction projects for buildings and other public infrastructure. Children with low songbun (a socio-political classification system the government uses to discriminate among North Korean citizens based on their perceived political loyalty to the ruling party) or those from poor families are often forced to do hard labor in these brigades without pay for up to 10 years.   “Children who end up in North Korean forced labor brigades live under terrible conditions, and are not free to leave,” said Kwon Eun-Kyoung, secretary general at the ICNK. “This type of enslavement must immediately be abolished and those responsible for directing these brigades punished.”   A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry on the situation of human rights in North Korea found a gravity, scale, and nature of violations that revealed a state “without parallel in the contemporary world.”   Abuses faced by children included, detention of children in political prison camps, trafficking and sexual exploitation of North Korean girls by Chinese men as wives or in the sex industry, and lack of civil and political rights and freedoms starting from childhood.   The Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly have condemned the human rights situation in North Korea. The UN Security Council has recognized the gravity of the situation by addressing North Korea’s bleak human rights record as a threat to international peace and security as a formal agenda item three years in a row.   “The North Korean government’s practice of child exploitation not only neglects its obligations to protect children,” said Lee So-Youn, director of New Korea. “But it also exploits and discriminates against the most vulnerable children from families with low songbun and those who are the poorest.” http://bit.ly/2kNHzhU   * A new report, authored by three internationally renowned judges – Navanethem Pillay, Thomas Buergenthal and Mark B Harmon – under the auspices of the International Bar Association (IBA) War Crimes Committee, calls on the international community to vest in the International Criminal Court (ICC) or a special international tribunal the power to investigate crimes against humanity committed in North Korea’s political prisons, and to hold culpable parties accountable for their crimes: http://bit.ly/2nZ1iRl Visit the related web page
	South Sudan: UN expert urges action to end rights abuses in a country where ''impunity is the norm'' by Yasmin Sooka Chair of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan   Amid a “massive” increase in gross human rights violations, as well as an escalation in fighting in South Sudan, the head of a United Nations rights probe said today that to prevent further escalation and abuses in a country where “impunity is the norm,” the international community must be bold enough to push for establishment of a court and bring prosecutions.   “There can be no more delay, no more excuses,” said Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, as she presented her report to the UN Human Rights Council, the Geneva-based body that mandated the three-member panel''s work almost exactly one year ago.   “The alternative,” she continued, “is policy of appeasement – making us complicit in the bloodshed that is happening.”   Among a host of experts that will this week update the Council on their work, Ms. Sooka, presenting the report alongside fellow Commissioners, Godfrey Musilla and Ken Scott, said the situation in South Sudan continued to deteriorate over the past nine months as unlawful arrests and detentions, torture, rape and killing “have become the norm,” including in places that had once been relatively peaceful.   Pattern of ethnic cleansing, ''population engineering'' in some villages   “Whole villages burnt to ashes, attacks on hospitals and churches, bodies dumped in rivers, allegations of young girls held as sexual slaves, women young and old gang raped and boys and men forcibly recruited,” she said, adding that South Sudan is the world''s third largest refugee crisis, with nearly two million internally displaced and more than one and a half million refugees having fled to neighbouring countries.   The report, she said, makes it clear that South Sudanese civilians have been deliberately and systematically targeted on the basis of their ethnicity by Government and government-aligned forces, for killing, abduction, unlawful detention, deprivation of liberty, rape and sexual violence, the burning of their villages, and looting.   “On the ground, this translates into bound corpses left on roadsides, hunger where once there was plenty, and thousands of children ripped from their mothers – some forced to carry guns and kill – yet another lost generation,” stated Ms. Sooka, stressing that citizens are treated like enemy combatants because of their perceived political allegiance to the other side, calculated by ethnicity. Opposition forces too have been responsible for human rights abuses although to a lesser extent, she added.   She went on to say that the scale of sexual violence in South Sudan “is so horrifying that the consequences of doing nothing are unthinkable.” Indeed, perpetrators will be emboldened if the international community ignores the issue.   The experts also reported on a pattern of ethnic cleansing and “population engineering.” When the Commission visited the northern town of Malakal, it saw how the redrawing of state boundary lines had helped depopulate the town of its Shilluk and Nuer inhabitants. Civil servants had been forcibly relocated out of the town on the basis of their ethnicity.   Reiterating the Commission''s call for an international impartial and independent investigation to be established by the UN – to examine the most serious crimes, including conflict-related sexual violence, committed since December 2013, she said the findings should establish the extent of ongoing violations and support the work of the promised Commission on Truth, Reconciliation and Healing and the Hybrid Court for South Sudan, which should be operational by the end of the year.   “There can be no more delay, no more excuses,” stated Ms. Sooka, underscoring that the deterioration in the human rights situation in South Sudan is directly attributable to impunity. The challenge for accountability is that alleged perpetrators still occupy senior political and military positions.   “A small coterie of South Sudan''s political leaders show total disregard not just for international human rights norms but for the welfare of their own people. They have squandered the oil wealth and plundered the country''s resources. Today the Government of South Sudan has effectively devolved most of its service delivery to the international community,” she said, adding that international humanitarians, including the UN, have little choice to accept the restrictions imposed by the State as they cannot walk away and let millions of people starve.   “The dilemma between being outspoken on human rights and securing access has never been more stark,” she said adding that: “In a country where impunity is the norm, the mere knowledge that credible information is being gathered can act as a deterrent. But only if we are bold enough to push for the immediate establishment of the Hybrid Court and prosecutions.”   South Sudan gained independence in 2011 but fell into violence in late 2013 when a political rivalry between President Salva Kiir and his then-deputy Riek Machar erupted into full-fledged conflict. http://bit.ly/2o4ggUC   http://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/south-sudan-humanitarian-coordinator-condemns-killing-six-aid-workers   Women and children flee famine and war in South Sudan. (Save the Children)   “The children and the elderly, they slaughtered them…. I''ve seen children tied to their dead mother and thrown in the river”.   After a UN report warned “a process of ethnic cleansing was under way” in South Sudan and famine was declared in Unity State, refugees have described the horrors that forced hundreds of thousands of women and children to flee to sanctuary in Uganda.   Since the fighting escalated in July 2016, more than half a million refugees have escaped from South Sudan, the majority into Uganda. This is now Africa’s largest refugee crisis; more than 1.5 million people have fled South Sudan since the conflict erupted in December 2013.   Of these, 86% are women and children arriving terrified, hungry and often alone. Many children are too traumatised to speak and do not know if their parents are alive. Last year more South Sudanese refugees crossed into Uganda than the number who crossed the Mediterranean in the same period.   Sylvia, a mother, 31, fled the conflict when she saw her best friend murdered by armed groups, along with the friend’s three month old daughter, in Yei, a city in the south west of South Sudan.   She said: “My closest friend and her children were slaughtered in Yei, she was still breastfeeding. The youngest was three months and the oldest was four.   "I''ve seen children tied to their dead mother and thrown in the river – soldiers have been doing this a lot. Children weren’t going to school, and there was hunger everywhere. Children would die of illness.”   Sylvia, travelled from Yei with other people from her village, spending several days hiding in the bush from the conflict. On her journey she found a two-year-old baby, hungry, dehydrated and lying in the ditch by the roadside. Sylvia still does not know the girl’s name, or what happened to her parents, but is now caring for her as her own. Sylvia said it was her duty as a mother to take the child in.   “I found her crying in a ditch,” Sylvia said. “She was naked, malnourished and dehydrated. The grass had almost covered her. As a mother I felt so bad, I had to take her.”   Joan, 35 – who arrived with Joy, a 14-year-old girl – completed the 80KM journey on foot while eight months pregnant. She described the terrifying situation for women and children in South Sudan, where young women were gang-raped by up to ten men, and women and children were slaughtered by soldiers.   “When the armed groups came to the village they would rape young girls. Ten men can sleep with one woman, no problem if you die. They used to not kill women, now they are killing women, children and the elderly.”   Flavia, a Save the Children worker, said: “They are telling us that back home they have witnessed their parents being killed. One boy said his father was hung next to him - it comes to him in his dreams and the next morning he wakes up and he’s speechless. We are also seeing cases of malnutrition; you can count their ribs when you see them.”   Pete Walsh, Save the Children’s Country Director in South Sudan, said:   “We are extremely concerned by UN warnings of atrocities in South Sudan and call on the parties to the conflict to protect civilians caught up in it.”   “The testimonies we are hearing are horrifying. Children are arriving alone, having been forced to flee their homes in search for safety and protection. Many are on the brink of starvation. Famine has already been declared in three locations and will spread, unless the world opens its eyes to this catastrophe.   “Save the Children is working across South Sudan and supporting refugees in Uganda. All parties to the conflict must ensure civilians are protected and aid workers are able to continuing delivering life-saving health-care and protection to vulnerable, innocent children.”   http://www.savethechildren.net/article/women-and-children-flee-famine-and-war-south-sudan http://bit.ly/2oevt2Z http://uni.cf/2kIFFiA http://www.fao.org/emergencies/crisis/south-sudan/en/ Visit the related web page
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