How are human rights violators held accountable? What are the best means of ensuring full human rights accountability? These are difficult questions, even more so in the case of violators being current high officials of an independent state. The answers go beyond existing human rights mechanisms and have much to do with international politics. This is the situation of North Korea.
Past experiences on cases of massive and systematic human rights violations point to the need for the preparation of solid bases for the prosecution of violators at some future date. At the same time, while the accountability mechanisms are not yet established, the victims deserve assistance in protecting and realizing their human rights.
The main challenge lies in pursuing a two-pronged approach to addressing the human rights situation in the country; building accountability measures and helping to protect and realize human rights are both important but also inherently difficult tasks.
In all these efforts, serving justice to the people must be the ultimate objective.