Civil Society Responses to Human Insecurity in North Korea: How Human Rights and Humanitarianism Intersect in Closed Authoritarian Contexts

Abstract

This dissertation explores intersections between international human rights and humanitarian organisations working in closed authoritarian contexts. Using North Korea as a case study, it looks at South Korean and North American NGOs as well as the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and explores their strategies in response to human insecurity in North Korea. Each of the three papers examines a different area of intersection: the first considers women’s rights in North Korea from a methodological perspective. It examines how a feminist lens that centres women’s voices and emphasises their diversity and intersectionality can be applied when local populations are inaccessible. The second article proposes a framework through which to evaluate human rights and humanitarian organisations’ strategies in response to human insecurity in North Korea: the engagement to accountability continuum. The third looks at the constraints imposed on humanitarian and human rights organisations by North Korean, South Korean and US governments, and examines how they adapt to these restrictions. Sources include UN and NGO reports, field work and in-depth qualitative interviews with staff members working at NGOs and IOs responding to human insecurity in North Korea, as well as policy advisors, journalists, and academic experts. The dissertation offers tools for incorporating feminist methodologies in human rights research, and its findings show that human rights and humanitarianism intersect in ways that have not previously been considered. Both groups tend to advocate for some combination of engagement and accountability, both are constrained by democratic and authoritarian governments, and both adapt to these constraints in similar ways.