The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday formally endorsed a resolution by a majority vote condemning North Korea's human rights record and urging for the second consecutive year that the Security Council consider referring the issue to the International Criminal Court.
It marked the 11th year in a row that the U.N. General Assembly has passed a similar resolution on Pyongyang's human rights issue. This year's draft received 119 votes in favor, while 19 countries — including China, Russia and Iran — voted against it and 48 abstained.
The document, authored by Japan and the European Union, references a U.N. commission of inquiry established in 2013 whose findings "provide reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed" according to "policies established at the highest level of the State for decades."