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Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea

Andrew Natsios, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development;Marcus Noland, Institute for International Economics;Gordon Flake, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation

Date & Time

Monday
Sep. 26, 2005
2:30pm – 4:30pm ET

Overview

In the 1990s, famine ravaged North Korea (DPRK); estimates of famine-induced deaths range from 600,000 upwards to two million. Today, malnutrition remains a major concern, particularly in a nation governed by a totalitarian regime with little regard for human rights. On September 26, the Asia Program and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea co-hosted a meeting that marked the release of a Committee report, Hunger and Human Rights: The Politics of Famine in North Korea, which explores the linkages between food aid and human rights issues in the DPRK.

USAID head Andrew Natsios, the author of an earlier book on North Korea's "Great Famine," addressed these linkages in detail. Totalitarian governments such as North Korea's must control all information and resources—including food—to safeguard their power. When such a regime distributes food aid selectively, in accordance with regime priorities instead of need, human rights become a casualty. The regime in Pyongyang views food distribution as another component of its struggle to minimize the likelihood of political instability—a bona fide fear in a nation that struggles with a "fragile" food security system, that has suffered through SARS, and that may face an avian flu pandemic. Natsios recommended that donor governments send food aid through the World Food Program (WFP), rather than as bilateral aid, to ensure that food reaches North Koreans most at risk.

Marcus Noland, one of the report's co-authors, lamented the DPRK government's complicity in the famine. He asserted that if North Korea had increased its commercial food imports—at a time when domestic food production was decreasing—the famine might not have materialized. Noland argued that the WFP lacks the ability to monitor food aid "from port to recipient." This absence of monitoring has invited "diversion"—the failure of food aid to reach its intended recipients. Worse, given the scarcity of government-provided food rations, the population impoverishes itself by turning to expensive market sources for food.

Gordon Flake assessed the broader implications of the debate over food aid. Given the premium North Korea places on security, he noted, food issues must be considered in the context of the Six Party Talks. The discussion of humanitarian assistance must also not be divorced from the nuclear weapons issue. While it has at times cooperated with the WFP, the DPRK still maintains a policy of "cut off, push out"—that is, of limiting access to a large portion of the North Korean population and in the longer run, of banning humanitarian workers. This, Flake cautioned, is an ominous development as the international community prepares for the possibility of renewed inspections of North Korea's nuclear programs.

Drafted by Michael Kugelman,
Asia Program Assistant
Robert M. Hathaway, Director,
Asia Program
Ph: (202) 691-4020

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Indo-Pacific Program

The Indo-Pacific Program promotes policy debate and intellectual discussions on US interests in the Asia-Pacific as well as political, economic, security, and social issues relating to the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region.   Read more

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