United States Institute of Peace

Why did Russia veto the renewal of the U.N. panel of experts on North Korea sanctions, which definitively ends U.N. monitoring of North Korea's expanding nuclear weapons programs?

There are layers of explanation for this veto. First, it follows Russia’s increasingly contentious reception to recent panel reports. The last panel report, released this past March, revealed far too much detail, for Moscow’s tastes, about Russian violations of sanctions in their expanding weapons trade with North Korea.

The foreshadowing of the panel’s demise came in spring 2023, when a short mention and photo of rail traffic between Russia and North Korea attributed to the Wagner Group in the panel’s report drew Russian ire. As the next panel was set to begin its work for 2023-2024, China took the rare and vengeful step of insisting that the panel could not survive unless its British coordinator was replaced. Thus, this final panel was under unprecedented pressure and always under Moscow’s microscope.

Another reason Russia ended the panel was its belief that sanctions had failed. Russia argued that more than a decade of sanctions over North Korean nuclear and missile activity had produced no change in DPRK behavior in these areas. To pursue new sanctions — and by extension, panel renewal for monitoring said sanctions — was deemed useless. 

Russia’s messaging about the futility of sanctions also included claims, which panel evidence often contradicted, that U.N. sanctions created a humanitarian disaster in North Korea. Citing sectoral sanctions on North Korean textile exports and on importing fertilizer and various agricultural machine goods, Russia portrayed the Kim regime as having been robbed of assets that could be devoted to improving the condition of the North Korean people.  

But each of these reasons for terminating the panel should be understood as Russian action to challenge to the legitimacy of U.N. sanctions, if not the U.N. Security Council itself. Killing the North Korea sanctions panel is part of Russia’s larger, revisionist narrative turned into an actionable agenda. Russia claims that the U.N. sanctions enterprise of the past 30 years has not been devoted to pursuing peace and security through economic constraints and diplomacy but rather steered toward an intentional Western domination of trade and finances, with the West and its allies choosing various victims at various times under the cover of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Russia’s commitment to this narrative has intensified since Russia itself has been subject to massive Western sanctions due to its war on Ukraine.

What has the U.N. community lost with the termination of the panel?

This question is essential, and one that is overlooked by current press coverage and discussion. Fortunately, two former coordinators of the panel — under whose leadership I was privileged serve — and one of my predecessors in the U.S. seat on the panel have commented in depth on this issue.

The most significant loss to the global community is the semi-annual, comprehensive analysis — thoroughly supported by photographic evidence and various testimonies — of illicit activities that contribute to North Korea’s illegitimate nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. This included an integrated analysis of both North Korea’s nuclear and missile developments and its extensive and diverse sanctions evasions in areas of shipping, overseas workers and hidden financial ventures and accounts.

For example, through the panel’s reports, we were able to see how North Korea financed its nuclear and ballistic missile developments through three massive revenue-generating activities: illicit financial exchanges, cyber theft, and by exceeding U.N. import and export volume caps by threefold. Recent panel reports have also analyzed Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear weapons strategy in useful ways, including the relevance of satellite technology that Russia may assist with in the near future.

Assessing the unintended humanitarian impact of sanctions has been one the most contentious and controversial areas of the panel’s work. Despite criticisms that sanctions have undermined the welfare of the North Korean people, panel investigations and meetings have also led to new sanctions exemptions and greater access for U.N. member states to information gathered by humanitarian organizations operating in North Korea — information that these organizations could not publish or publicly discuss.

Finally, without the panel’s published reports, U.N. member states will have no investigative findings on the pervasive criminal networks and the various actors that enable this and other forms of sanctions evasion by North Korea. The panel regularly specified entities and individuals that should be added to the U.N. sanctions list.

Are there viable new entities that have emerged that can create a functional equivalent to the panel? How close are they to adoption?

There are various proposals for alternative monitoring mechanisms. The proposed alternatives divide into two groups: Those that have a close link to the U.N. structure and those that are outside of it.

The most widely discussed option, which seems to have run out of momentum, was for the U.N. General Assembly to create the same type of “independent, impartial and investigative mechanism” for North Korea that it did for Syria in 2016. Such an entity would not write reports but continue to testify to the General Assembly about some of the critical areas the mechanism investigated.

Another U.N.-related proposal under discussion focused on enhancing the powers and scope of the U.N.’s North Korea Sanctions Committee, and especially the committee’s chair. The chair could ask a coalition of member states to investigate North Korean sanctions evasions and could continue to receive reporting about humanitarian conditions in North Korea from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA). The key stumbling block here is that the current rules of the committee are that it can only take such actions by consensus, which Russia and China will surely block.

Some U.N. member states in the region have suggested creating new ad hoc mechanisms outside of the U.N. framework while supplying experts to undertake tasks that mirrored the panel. However, many other member states viewed this approach as too hostile, akin to forming a new alliance against North Korea.

One promising idea is creating a loose federation of some U.N. entities — including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Maritime Organization, and OCHA — and several major research agencies, like C4ADS, to produce timely reports on the functional areas that the panel studied. This approach provides some linkage to the U.N. authorization and legitimacy that many member states have advocated for. But it would need an executive director to coordinate the effort, as well as external funding.

Yet, none of these ideas have come to fruition — and I fear that the energy and commitment to find some type of monitoring mechanism will most likely wane as we get deeper into the summer.

That noted, I do have a new degree of optimism due to the unanimous passage (including Russia and China, who both strongly supported this proposal) of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2744 on July 19, which expanded and strengthened the Focal Point for Delisting — the Security Council mechanism for delisting individuals and entities that appeal their designation as sanctions violators.

The resolution also created a new informal working group on general sanctions issues. This mechanism, a previous version of which served as an important forum for clarifying the use and monitoring of targeted sanctions from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, might create new space for discussing the use of sanctions to strengthen nuclear non-proliferation.

Are there any other mechanisms that haven’t been discussed yet?

I have suggested two rather different routes within the U.N. system. The first would be for the secretary-general, who must become engaged in this crisis, to create an eminent persons group to re-examine what worked well and what went wrong in the three sanctions and non-proliferation cases taken on by the Security Council: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This group would have a three-year mandate, devoting about a year to each case, beginning with the failure of the most recent and on-going case of North Korea. 

This group would assess Pyongyang’s development of nuclear materials and production facilities despite U.N. sanctions; its use of both legal and illicit trade and finance to bankroll and sustain such programs; and the impact of sanctions on North Korea’s resource management and the welfare of its citizens. The comparative case reports would guide the Security Council in future cases.

Alternatively, likeminded countries led by South Korea could request that the U.N.’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) — with its widely respected, non-prejudicial mandate regarding in-depth analysis of humanitarian and human rights concerns — investigate the sanctions impact question. The logic for basing this panel alternative in the IASC flows from South Korea making human rights and humanitarian concerns a key focus of its monthlong U.N. Security Council presidency this past June, as well as this year marking the 10th anniversary of the Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry report on North Korea’s human rights situation.

With no panel successor institution on the horizon, and in light of North Korea and Russia declaring a comprehensive strategic partnership, what can the United States do beyond the U.N. system?

The United States, in coordination with likeminded allies and partners and other member states committed to non-proliferation and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, must take action.

The United States should begin with the recognition that sanctions were always meant to be leverage for direct diplomacy. The absence of diplomacy with North Korea for the past five years left a void for Russia to fill. Yet, no matter how much Kim Jong-Un values the benefits of a tight relationship with Russia, Putin cannot provide the multilateral sanctions relief that might come by engaging with the United States.

The United States must intensify efforts to establish a direct dialogue with North Korean leadership. At the start, Washington should not issue ultimatums that Pyongyang must choose between Russia and the United States. Rather, the United States should consider an aggressive roadmap of confidence-building measures to get Kim back to the table.

At the same time, the United States must continue to attend to the security concerns of Japan, South Korea and other regional partners. This means constant efforts to strengthen bilateral alliances and various forms of trilateral, mini-lateral and regional mechanisms (including with North Korea), as well as providing technical assistance to various nations and private sector systems that are particularly vulnerable to North Korean cybercrime and hacking schemes.

George A. Lopez has been an analyst of economic sanctions for more than 30 years.