North Korea criticized Western nations on Wednesday, coinciding with the United Nations’ (UN) Human Rights Day, accusing them of arbitrarily judging the human rights situations in sovereign countries and using human rights as a tool for interfering in internal affairs.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry published an article on its website titled, Human Rights Are Not a Means to Achieve Political Goals, asserting this stance.
North Korea claimed that Western powers are exploiting human rights as a political pawn and using them as a scale to pursue geopolitical dominance.
The statement pointed out that Western nations turn a blind eye to their own systemic and widespread human rights violations, including poverty, unemployment, killings, and discrimination. It argued that the West’s practice of arbitrarily judging and slandering the human rights conditions of sovereign nations based on their own standards is a desecration of the sacred concept of human rights.
This response appears to express North Korea’s frustration with the international community’s persistent criticism of its human rights issues, particularly following the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee’s passage of a resolution on November 19 condemning the dire human rights conditions faced by North Korean citizens.
The UN annually commemorates Human Rights Day on December 10, marking the date when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948.