Thank you very much, Chair. I offer my respects to the Parliament of Canada. It's a great privilege for an Australian and a former Australian judge to come here and to be in the House of the people and in the presence of elected members of Parliament. This is a privilege that Canada has and that Australia also enjoys, which is a great historical tradition that, sadly, the people of North Korea do not enjoy.

The United Nations commission of inquiry was set up in March 2013 for the purpose of examining human rights abuses, news of which was trickling out into the international community from North Korea.

I should say at the beginning with regard to the notice of meeting that whilst I would be proud to be Michael J. L. Kirby, who is of course a very distinguished Canadian and former senator, his middle initials are different from mine. My middle initial is D, after my father Donald. I feel that out of respect for my father, I have to mention the difference.

I also want to acknowledge the presence here today of the Honourable Hugh Segal, a former senator of Canada. We worked together as members of the eminent persons group on the future of the Commonwealth of Nations. I'm very glad he's here. He hasn't been well, but he's gotten to the bottom of the problems and he's looking fine. He will continue to give his enormous service to Canada, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the world.

With regard to the report of the commission of inquiry, we had a very large mandate. It was a mandate of 10 items, ranging over issues such as the starvation of the population during the great famine of the 1990s, the denigration of women, the inability to move about the country, the control of information, the lack of a free press, and the detention camps in which people who were thought to be enemies of the regime and their families were detained. All of those were committed to us with the obligation to report, effectively, in seven months.

We reported in seven months. We reported on time, within budget, and unanimously. We went about our report in a different way. We adopted the anglo-Canadian-Australian methodology of public hearings. That is not the normal way the United Nations conducts its inquiries, but we thought transparency was the way to get the evidence and to place the evidence before the world.

We knew from the beginning that we would not get into North Korea. They protect their secrets by not engaging. Therefore, we opened public hearings and called for witnesses to come forward. There are 28,000 refugees from North Korea living in South Korea, and so, for our inquiries in the public hearings in Seoul, Tokyo, London, Washington, and Bangkok, we had no difficulty getting testimony. In the end, we had to cut the testimony off to be able to report on time.

We found many grave violations of human rights, many rising to the level of crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are extremely serious international crimes. If the country itself will not respond to the crimes, it is the duty of the international community to respond by protecting the people from crimes against humanity.

As a footnote, I'd mention that we had considered whether genocide had been found. We ultimately did not find genocide, leaving that to any future investigation, because genocide is defined in the genocide convention of 1948 as destroying a population or part of a population on the grounds of race, nationality, ethnicity and religion.

In North Korea, the destruction of people is on the basis of their assumed political allegiance and belief. We therefore held back from finding genocide, but we found crimes against humanity and we called for action by the international community to fulfill the R2P, the responsibility to protect, the people of North Korea from the crimes that are being committed against them.

In the pursuit of our report the United Nations did everything that could reasonably have been expected. I have to pay a tribute to the secretariat that worked for us and to the officers of the Canadian missions overseas. I'm thinking in particular of Ambassador Golberg, the ambassador of Canada in Geneva, who was outstandingly helpful in organizing our meetings with members of the delegations from Latin America.

By these procedures we gathered together at every stage in the consideration of our report extremely strong votes in the committees and organs of the United Nations. In the Human Rights Council we gathered support from 30 members of the council, 30 of 45, and only six members voted against: China, the Russian Federation, Venezuela, Cuba, Pakistan, and Vietnam. But all the other substantial members voted, some 30 members, and a number abstained.

The report then went to the General Assembly of the United Nations, where there was a repetition of this voting pattern. In the end we gathered the support of 116 countries to vote for the report to send it further, with 20 voting against it, and 55 abstaining. That is an extremely strong vote in the General Assembly.

Then, most unusually and exceptionally, the General Assembly adopted the resolution sending the report to the Security Council. It is very rare for the Security Council to become involved in human rights matters, but we were able to convince the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council that this is a case where peace and security is bound up in the issues of human rights. If you have a violent country doing terrible wrongs to its people, that is an unstable situation for peace and security.

The report was sent to the Security Council and by reason of an initiative taken by France, the United States of America, and Australia, then a non-permanent member of the council, the Security Council ultimately voted 11 to 2 in favour of placing our report and the issues of human rights in North Korea on the agenda of the Security Council. The two against were China and the Russian Federation, and two, Chad and Nigeria, abstained.

That vote by China and the Russian Federation did not amount to a veto because there is a provision in the Charter of the United Nations, copied interestingly from the Covenant of the League of Nations, whereby for procedural votes you need only a two-thirds majority and no veto is applicable.

That is where the report stands at the moment. It has gone through the procedures of the United Nations to the very highest level and, exceptionally, it is on the table of the Security Council awaiting a time when the countries of the Security Council decide they will consider it.

I do hope that Canada in its representation in New York will take such initiatives as are appropriate to ensure that on or before the 12-month anniversary, which means December 22, 2015, some steps will be taken in the Security Council to consider the matter, which is on their agenda.

It's appropriate to say, I think, that the big challenge for the international community now is, what's next? How do we move this matter, where there is such a huge expression of concern in countries that often don't come together, particularly on human rights matters, within the United Nations system?

The commission of inquiry recommended that the Security Council refer the case of North Korea to the International Criminal Court. Under the Rome treaty, which set up the International Criminal Court, only countries that are members of the Rome treaty are subject to its jurisdiction. But again, there is an exception, and the exception is where the Security Council refers the matter to the International Criminal Court. Such a decision would not be a procedural decision. It would be a substantive decision, and it would therefore have to run the gauntlet of the permanent five veto. That is the position we now face.

I think it would probably be most useful if the members of the committee questioned me about the problems, the difficulties, the challenges, and the frustrations that we faced on our path. I do think that, as a consequence of the work of the commission of inquiry, North Korea has to some extent been required to examine itself in a way that it had not done before.

Some very unusual things have happened in North Korea and in their response to the international community. It's not a bad thing that North Korea has begun to take part in the universal periodic review procedures, but it still will not allow the special rapporteur to come into North Korea, and it is still not engaging fully with the United Nations human rights machinery.

But insofar as the commission of inquiry could secure a response from the United Nations, I have to speak in praise of the United Nations. This is one occasion where, I think in part because of the different procedure we adopted—procedures that would be much more familiar in Canada—we have made North Korea an issue in the international community, and that has been a good thing. I hope it will lead on to action, including ultimately referral of the matters of North Korea to the International Criminal Court.

The United Nations often speaks of accountability for crimes against humanity. Well, now we know. Now we have the information. We have a lot of evidence. It's online. It's available to the whole world. The question is what the world will do with it. I am very reassured and heartened by the fact that the Canadian Parliament, elected by the people of Canada, has been sufficiently concerned and involved in the issues of North Korea to invite me to come along today to tell you about the work of the commission of inquiry on North Korea.

I'd add one final observation. I'm not now a mandate holder of the United Nations. The United Nations commission of inquiry completed its report on time and delivered it to the Human Rights Council in March of 2014. The mandate holder is now Mr. Darusman, who was a member of the commission of inquiry, and he continues his obligations as special rapporteur, but with his knowledge and agreement, I am here today explaining the steps that were taken by the commission of inquiry.

So long as I have breath, I will continue to speak up for the people of North Korea, who have suffered grievously and who deserve the attention of freedom-loving people all around the world, including in Canada.

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