Hunger and Human Rights:
The Politics of Famine

During the 1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in a famine that ranks as one of the most destructive of the 20th century. These deaths were largely unnecessary, the result of a misguided strategy of self-reliance that only served to increase the country's vulnerability. Slow to respond to the crisis-as closed, authoritarian governments so frequently are-the regime continued to criminalize many of the very coping strategies it had forced on its own population.

The humanitarian response was generous, with the international community providing $2 billion in food aid over the past decade. There can be little question that this aid served to relieve human suffering in North Korea. Yet nearly a decade after the famine crested, North Korea remains dependent on international largesse. Many of its citizens continue to face insecurity in their access to food, and the completely closed nature of the political system means they have few channels through which they can bring their grievances to light. Nonetheless, the North Korean government continues to frustrate transparent, effective humanitarian relief. It can continue to pursue this strategy because the international community provides the country with aid despite these impediments. In effect, the North Korean government has used the suffering of its own people as a form of political leverage. This study has implications for four sets of actors: the North Korean government itself; the donor community working through the WFP; the two countries-China and South Korea-who extend aid bilaterally; and the non-governmental organizations engaged in the country.

The right to food is enshrined most clearly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which North Korea has been a party since December 1981.4 The nature of governments' obligations under the ICESCR has subsequently been clarified through a wide-ranging consultative process, including most specifically by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its General Comment No. 12 of 1999. The ICESCR does recognize that the right to adequate food can only be realized progressively, but General Comment 12 is clear that states have the obligation to "respect, protect, and fulfill" this right (para. 15).

The obligation to fulfill includes an obligation to provide, but recognizes implicitly that governments cannot necessarily meet this obligation on their own. The ICESCR and its subsequent interpretation therefore includes both an obligation to facilitate (General Comment 12, para. 15) and corresponding duties on the part of the international community to assist governments in distress or chronic need (ICESCR Article 11; General Comment 12, para. 36).

North Korea experienced severe economic shocks in the early 1990s, a tense standoff with respect to its nuclear weapons program, an uncertain political transition, and a succession of national disasters. Since October 2002, the country is once again involved in a dispute with the international community over its nuclear weapons ambitions. Each of these circumstances contributed to North Korea's economic isolation and posed severe policy challenges to the government.

None of these challenges, however absolve the government from its most basic of all responsibilities: to guarantee the survival needs of its people. To the contrary, national security arguments ring particularly hollow when authoritarian regimes use them to justify inhumane treatment of their populations. General Comment 12 (para. 6) is quite explicit on this point: "States have a core obligation to take the necessary action to mitigate and alleviate hunger as provided for in paragraph 2 of article 11, even in times of natural or other disasters."

The failure to provide is self-evident in the great famine of the mid-1990s and the ongoing evidence of food shortages. Equally, if not more disturbing, is the systematic evidence that the government did not adjust in a timely fashion to the shocks of the early 1990s and was slow in reaching out to humanitarian assistance as evidence of the famine became clear. Once the government did solicit external assistance, it not only engaged in a systematic effort to limit effective targeting, monitoring, and assessment of food delivery, but cut whole portions of the country off from desperately needed help. The result was a famine that killed as many as five percent of the populace-a substantial portion of them children-and consigned countless others to broken lives and stunted human development.

A key to resolving the North Korean hunger problem is the development of a functioning economy that generates sufficient foreign exchange earnings to purchase food on a commercial basis-just as its neighbors Japan, South Korea, and China do. While food security is an understandable national goal, it seldom, if ever, is best achieved through the pursuit of self-sufficiency. Given North Korea's basic endowments, it is highly unlikely that the country is capable of achieving food self-sufficiency; indeed, the famine and chronic food shortages have proven the point beyond dispute. Advocates of food security through selfsufficiency unwittingly play into misguided government aspirations in this regard and thus actually impede a solution to the ongoing crisis (Ahn 2005).

In reality, the only question is whether the necessary sources of external food supply continue to come from the international community or are financed by North Korea's own efforts. The precise contours of a reform program to achieve sustainable food imports must ultimately be decided by the government of North Korea. There is no one model, or blueprint, that North Korea must pursue, as the diversity of development experiences in theregion attest.

However, the international community can assist. Many of North Korea's problems are long-term and developmental in nature. As the humanitarian community has long recognized, North Korea needs comprehensive technical assistance and development financing that can be provided in a relatively depoliticized way. Therefore North Korea's entry into the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Asian Development Bank, should be strongly supported even if membership in these institutions is only likely to occur with the resolution of the current nuclear standoff and the dispute over Japanese abductees. In the meantime, North Korea will remain reliant on humanitarian relief. In this respect it is imperative that North Korea:

• Lift the manifold restrictions and impediments that it continues to place on the humanitarian community and abide by the international agreements to which it is a signatory. While responsibility for North Korea's diplomatic problems are subject to dispute, these disputes do not absolve the government of its obligation to abide by the most basic and widely recognized principles governing humanitarian relief.

It is tempting to conclude that solving this most basic problem-achieving the ability to finance adequate food imports on a sustainable basis-is the only thing that needs to be done. But the economic reforms required to achieve this objective are only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for improving access to food.

The North Korean food problem is not just a problem of production and capacity to import, but also an issue of distribution and entitlement; such questions necessarily depend on fundamental features of the political system. North Korea's tragedy could only have occurred in a system in which the political leadership was insulated from events on the ground, and shielded from political competition and freedom of association and speech.

• The improvement of human and civil rights, loosening controls on the press and allowing a genuine civil society to flourish would all enable the state to behave in a more responsive and responsible way toward its own citizens.
• Granting citizens secure property rights, and the freedom to trade and engage in private production without fear of retribution or confiscation would have a similar effect by increasing incomes and relieving pressures on the PDS.

While a better functioning economy is a prerequisite for solving the hunger problem, it alone will not permanently guarantee a North Korea free from hunger. Only political change can do that.

Food crises trigger obligations not only on the part of the country experiencing them, but for the international community as well. The bulk of total aid provided to North Korea has come through the WFP, with the United States, the European Union, and Japan all playing significant roles at various times. A crucial first question is whether the international community should provide aid to North Korea at all. A variety of critics-not only in the United States but in Europe and South Korea as well-have argued that aid to North Korea only serves to prop up the current regime. Food insecurity is likely to remain a problem as long as this regime holds power. Some, therefore, conclude that the ultimate aim of the external community should be regime change in North Korea. Moreover, it has been suggested that the goal of policy reform would be advanced by coordinated action to cut North Korea off from the international economy and even from external supplies of food.

A reformist government would be desirable. But there are a number of flaws in jumping from this conclusion to prescriptions for how humanitarian assistance should be managed. First, the North Korean government has repeatedly shown its ability to impose extreme deprivation on its people. If the current regime was capable of surviving a devastating famine, it is highly dubious to assume that coordinated, wholesale reductions in food aid will necessarily lead to improved conditions or policy reform. In any case, there is little evidence that such coordination is possible given the competing political interests of the donor countries.

Moreover, this argument rests on a questionable utilitarian logic: that it is morally acceptable to sacrifice the innocent today in the uncertain prospect that lives will be saved or improved at some future point. This type of argument flies directly in the face of the fundamental rights that the international community is trying to uphold. While it is courageous for some to choose to make such a sacrifice for themselves, it is unacceptable for the outside community to choose it for the North Koreans. It is important to point out that those NGOs who did pull out of North Korea did so in the context of the WFP, bilateral donors, and other NGOs continuing to provide food and services. The calculus is very different when considering whether total food aid should be reduced or cut altogether.

It is also important to underscore that the humanitarian effort, however impeded, has almost certainly had positive effects on meeting the needs of vulnerable groups. Moreover, in the presence of functioning markets and diversion to undeserving groups or the market, food aid can still have beneficial effects for vulnerable populations by increasing overall supply and moderating prices. And markets are indeed developing: most local food production now finds it way onto the market, and the PDS exists largely as a mechanism for distributing foreign aid.

The sheer volume of aid that has been poured into the country and the apparent improvement in conditions since the peak famine years seem to suggest that aid has indeed had some beneficial effects through one or both of these channels. Yet the North Korean government has imposed severe restrictions on attempts to conduct rigorous analyses of nutritional status. Nutritional status remains at levels found only in the very poorest of countries. This does not mean that delivered aid is ineffective; it only demonstrates the uphill battle the humanitarian community must fight in a context where other features of the system make it difficult to be as effective as it otherwise could be. Just as the closed nature of the North Korean system inhibits effective program design, implementation, and monitoring, it prevents effective evaluation as well. There is much that remains hidden.

The arguments in favor of assistance seem clear, but one must simultaneously be clear-headed about the nature of the bargains that have been struck. It is likely that aid is not proffered in a non-discriminatory manner. Given the political stratification of North Korea and the inability of the WFP to achieve minimum standards of transparency and monitoring in its operations, deserving households-including politically disfavored households-are not getting the food intended for them or are being denied relief altogether. Recent refugee interviews confirm this point (Chang, forthcoming).

Furthermore, diversion is almost certainly occurring, and its scale is not small. If the off-the-record estimates of humanitarian assistance workers are to be believed, perhaps enough food to feed 3 to 10 percent of the North Korean populace is diverted. Some of this aid is almost surely consumed by the less deserving. The diversion that does go to the market is contributing to the creation of a privileged class of state-sector entrepreneurs and their allies. North Korea is becoming an increasingly stratified society, with a sharp division between those with access to foreign exchange and food and those without.

The administrators of the international aid program have worked in extremely difficult circumstances, even heroically, to assist the people of North Korea. Yet it is critical that within these constraints, the WFP continue to be not only the humanitarian face of the international community but a voice of conscience for those deprived of the most fundamental right to food. The WFP and its associated donors must:

• Continue to highlight government practices that impede the delivery of food to vulnerable groups;
• Continue to uphold the humanitarian principles outlined above;
• Continue to abide by the principle that aid will not be extended to counties where access is denied;
• Explore technical solutions to improve the quality of monitoring, such as the introduction of modern inventory-management systems that can reduce the scope for diversion and assure donors that their contributions were used as intended.

In the end, however, regardless of technical improvements of the aid program, the international community must make a concerted and coordinated effort to wean North Korea from humanitarian assistance. This would involve outlining and negotiating a path of reduced humanitarian assistance over time, subject to reversal in the face of natural disasters. One of the most disturbing findings is the evidence that North Korea seems unwilling to purchase grain. This practice cannot continue. The burden of financing North Korea's food deficit should be shifted from the international humanitarian community-which is facing pressing needs elsewhere-onto the North Koreans themselves.

Resources are not limitless, and there are other competing needs around the world. In the absence of significant changes in North Korean government policy, scarce resources may be better deployed elsewhere.

Two countries, China and South Korea, provide concessional sales or grants of food to North Korea outside of the WFP. It is not evident that China has conditioned aid either on overall policy reform or more particular principles of programmatic design, implementation, or monitoring. In the case of South Korea, concessional food assistance has been provided without any attempt to assess conditions or target vulnerable groups, and with only perfunctory attempts to monitor its distribution.

In this regard the practices of the South Korean government have been most disappointing. Large, relatively open-ended aid commitments-amounting to nearly 90 percent of total WFP appeals-are having the unintended consequence of undermining the WFP's attempts to uphold the norms embodied in international agreements to which South Korea is a party. Special circumstances bind the South and North Korean people together. However, if China and South Korea assume the role of suppliers of last resort, North Korea will be able to avoid greater accountability.

• China and South Korea should channel future concessional food assistance through the WFP. Their experience and voice would be of invaluable assistance to WFP operations-both generally and in North Korea-and would facilitate the coordinated approach needed to reduce North Korea's dependence on humanitarian assistance.

Given that most food aid passes through official channels, the outstanding and innovative work that has been done by the variety of NGOs who have worked in North Korea must be addressed. A handful of influential organizations have taken the decision to leave, while others have stayed in the hope of continuing to do effective work.

These organizations are private, and it is ultimately up to them how they choose to organize relations with the North Korean government. A number of them have adopted innovative strategies that manage to provide assistance while also serving to advance the cause of basic human rights and the empowerment of the people whom they serve.

• At the same time, within their limited freedom of maneuver, it is hoped that NGOs focus not only on their humanitarian mission, but on the basic rights that are a necessary condition to ensure that entitlements to food are guaranteed.

The failure of the North Korean government to guarantee adequate supplies of food to its population is related directly to the government's denial of a battery of other rights to its citizens: to confront public officials with their shortcomings, to publicize information that allows government officials to know the extent of distress, and to organize collectively in the face of injustice and deprivation. In the presence of these rights, North Korea might well have experienced food shortages, but neither the great famine nor the chronic shortages of food would have been possible. NGOs working in North Korea would not be toiling in an unsupportive environment or struggling with the consequences of an ongoing food emergency. Their scarce human and financial resources could have been deployed to other areas of need where local governments would be more supportive of their mission. Therein lies the link between access to food and human rights.