The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday named Australian former judge Michael Kirby to steer a landmark probe of abuses in North Korea, which refuses to cooperate with the world body’s investigators.
The council said Kirby would lead a three-member team whose mandate was set down at a March session of the United Nations’ top human rights forum.
Kirby sat on Australia’s High Court from 1996 to 2009, and served previously as president of the International Commission of Jurists, UN special representative for Cambodia and a member of the World Health Organization’s Global Commission on AIDS.
The team’s other members are Serbian human rights campaigner Sonja Biserko, an expert on war crimes, and Marzuki Darusman, an Indonesian former attorney general who since 2010 has been monitoring North Korea for the council.
The commission’s stated goal to probe ‘systematic, widespread and grave violations’, with the aim of ‘ensuring full accountability, in particular for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity’.
The council set up the commission - similar to one in place for the Syria conflict - after Darusman presented a report accusing North Korea of a string of violations including torture, arbitrary detention, etc.
The council said Kirby would lead a three-member team whose mandate was set down at a March session of the United Nations’ top human rights forum.
Kirby sat on Australia’s High Court from 1996 to 2009, and served previously as president of the International Commission of Jurists, UN special representative for Cambodia and a member of the World Health Organization’s Global Commission on AIDS.
The team’s other members are Serbian human rights campaigner Sonja Biserko, an expert on war crimes, and Marzuki Darusman, an Indonesian former attorney general who since 2010 has been monitoring North Korea for the council.
The commission’s stated goal to probe ‘systematic, widespread and grave violations’, with the aim of ‘ensuring full accountability, in particular for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity’.
The council set up the commission - similar to one in place for the Syria conflict - after Darusman presented a report accusing North Korea of a string of violations including torture, arbitrary detention, etc.