Referral of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court (2014 on)

On 18 December 2014, the GA passed resolution 69/188 with 116 votes in favour to 20 against (including the DPRK) with 53 abstentions. The resolution first condemned the “long-standing and ongoing systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights” in DPRK, including those identified by an HRC-mandated COI as potentially amounting to crimes against humanity (A/RES/69/188). After detailing some of the violations noted in that report and by other bodies, the GA then referred the SC to the COI’s report and urged the SC to “take appropriate action to ensure accountability, including through consideration of referral of the situation in the DPRK to the ICC” (ibid., paras. 2, 8).¹ It notably also urged the SC to consider “the scope for effective targeted sanctions against those who appear to be most responsible for acts that the commission has said may constitute crimes against humanity” (ibid., para. 8). While the SC did not make a referral, it held a meeting on the DPRK a few days following resolution 69/188, the first instance in which the SC had considered the human rights situation in the country as a separate agenda item.²

One year later, in December 2015, the GA again requested that the SC refer the situation in the DPRK to the ICC, calling for it, in exactly the same terms, to consider a referral to the ICC and the “scope for effective targeted sanctions” (A/RES/70/172). While the GA welcomed the SC’s decision to add the situation to its agenda, it stressed the importance of following up on the recommendations contained in the COI on human rights in the 2014 DPRK report (ibid.). In 2016, following continued SC inaction, and in the same terms as previous resolutions, the GA once again called on the SC to refer the situation to the ICC in resolution 71/202 (A/RES/71/202). The same recommendations have been repeated annually in GA resolutions on the DPRK up through the latest in December 2023 (A/RES/78/218).³

To date, the SC has not taken up most of these recommendations, including that it refer the DPRK to the ICC. However, it held formal discussions on the human rights situation in the DPRK each year between 2014 and 2017, most recently on 17 August 2023 (S/PV.9398) – the first such meeting in the prior five years.