The U.S., Albania, Japan, and South Korea led a U.N. Security Council session that shone a spotlight on starvation and repression under Kim Jong Un's regime.
Top experts spoke of starvation, deportation and torture while detailing North Korea's severe human rights abuses in a desperate economy during the U.N. Security Council's first open briefing on the situation since 2017.
Ilhyeok Kim, who was born in 1995 at Saetbyeol, North Korea, during the nation's devastating famine, told the council about how he worked in unpaid forced labor from an early age but escaped with his family to South Korea in 2011.
The number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity has increased every year since 2019.
The U.N. body also demands Israel be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The ruling orders Israel to allow aid trucks loaded with food and supplies to enter Gaza unhindered "without delay."
WHO warns disease and hunger are at alarming levels in the Congo, where almost 10 million people are on the move.
Fourteen cases remain under investigation by U.N. investigators, who have met with authorities in Israel.
The chair of the talks called for optimism despite divisions among plastic-producing nations and those urging restraints.
The number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity has increased every year since 2019.
The group of organizations that reviewed the U.N. agency recommends several ways of strengthening its neutrality.
