Tomas Ojea Quintana urged the UN Security Council to reconsider sanctions imposed on the isolated country over its nuclear and missile programs, so as to ensure food supplies
Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, speaks during a news conference in Geneva, on March 9, 2020.A United Nations human rights expert voiced alarm on Tuesday at “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea, made worse by a nearly five-month border closure with China and strict quarantine measures against COVID-19.
North Korea, where a famine in the mid-1990s is believed to have killed 3 million people, does not report COVID-19 cases to the World Health Organization.The pandemic has brought “drastic economic hardship” to North Korea, Ojea Quintana said, with a 90 per cent fall in trade with China in March and April leading to lost incomes.
Ojea Quintana urged Pyongyang to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered “without restrictions”. Operations have been suspended outside the capital, leaving vaccine stocks and other aid “stranded” at the border. Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN’s World Food Programme, told reporters the humanitarian situation in North Korea remained “bleak”.
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