Most of the countries that voted “no” in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, and even in the Security Council, took no issue with the content of the report of the commission of inquiry. They objected, as they put it, to specific-nation inquiries. They said that had been the fault of the former Human Rights Commission and that in establishing the Human Rights Council, with the procedure of universal periodic review, the way forward in international pursuit of human rights was not finger-wagging or naming-and-shaming, but engagement and mutual criticism of each other, and that view was expressed by countries such as Cuba, the Russian Federation, China, and so on.
However, once you have a report, which was commissioned by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, and the report is performed honestly and with integrity and with transparency, and you have it on your table, it takes a very high level of formalism for you then to say, you don't care what the report contains, that you're just against country-specific mandates and, therefore, that you're not even going to open the pages.
That surely cannot be the way the United Nations' system operates, and the very large votes in the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly Third Committee, the plenary of the General Assembly, and now in the Security Council on a procedural motion, is an indication that people are, I think, really fed up with the non-engagement of North Korea, its refusal to cooperate, and its charm offensive so long as it hoped that that would stave off referral to the Security Council, and then its almost total reversion to non-engagement, which has happened since the decision of the Security Council to place this matter on their agenda.
So that's where we stand at the moment, and the real challenge is how this matter will be pressed forward in the Security Council, given the position adopted by China and the Russian Federation, two P5 members.
One step that was recommended by the commission of inquiry was the establishment of a field office in Seoul. The objective of that was to continue the work of the commission of inquiry, collecting testimony and getting the statements of people who have been victims of grave crimes against humanity, so that when in due course it becomes possible, either in the International Criminal Court or in some other tribunal, that testimony will be placed before an independent decision-maker and people will be held accountable to the standards of the United Nations. It will all be prepared and it will be ready.
In the Second World War, there was some evidence toward the end of the war that the conduct of Nazi officials and others was moderated by the fear of accountability at the end of the war. So what we have to hope for is that the actions of placing this matter on the agenda of the Security Council and all the decisions of the UN organs will render those in North Korea who have responsibility for the prevention of crimes against humanity and for securing accountability for crimes against humanity to take into account the possibility that at some future time this might be a matter that will be called to account.
That was the reason why I, on behalf of the commission of inquiry, wrote to Kim Jong-un, and that we sent him a draft when we completed our report. We asked for his comments and drew to this attention that in international law those who have the responsibility for crimes of this kind, or who having the power to prevent them fail to do so, are responsible for those crimes and will be held to account.
I was told at the time that that was something the United Nations had never previously done, but that didn't deter me or the commission of inquiry at all, because it was simple due process to give people, whom you are providing with evidence that might one time have to be dealt with, notice that that is the position, that if they have the power and they hold back from taking steps that should be taken, then one day they may be accountable.
It's in the furtherance of that day that the work of the commission of inquiry was in part devoted.