A Responsibility to Report? The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Reporting

Abstract

The major international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, play a central role in shaping public perceptions of human rights conditions around the world. They are widely perceived as neutral sources interested only in promoting human rights. As a result, they have become the basis of the most important datasets used in quantitative research, and proponents of a Responsibility to Protect have suggested they can act as impartial early warning mechanisms. Yet recent work on these groups suggest that their reporting is also shaped by institutional imperatives, such as the need to get press coverage for reports, to raise funds, and to respond to donors.BR Human rights conditions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are arguably among the worst in the world. Yet the reporting of the major human rights organizations on the DPRK has been surprisingly limited. This paper examines the factors that have shaped human rights reporting on the DPRK over time, and the implications of these factors for our understanding of the incidence of human rights reporting globally.