"Multilateral" DPRK Sanctions Monitor Planned

The United States, South Korea and Japan announced the formation of a Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) on North Korea as an alternative to the dissolved U.N. panel of experts that had monitored sanctions enforcement until April.

The announcement was made at a news conference Wednesday in Seoul, while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was in the country to meet his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

VOA reports that members of the former U.N. panel of experts said the new mechanism could function effectively but might be hurt by the lack of a United Nations mandate.

"This new organization will ultimately suffer from legitimacy problems," although it is an important step in reestablishing reliable reporting around North Korea's sanctions evasion activities, said Aaron Arnold, who served on the U.N. panel of experts from 2019 to 2021.

"Because it is not operating under a [U.N. Security Council] resolution mandate, it will lack credibility in the eyes of many states. Unfortunately, it's more likely that it will be those states that are most at risk for being exposed to North Korea's sanctions evasion and proliferation-related activities," said Arnold, currently a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

China and Russia, two of the five veto-wielding Security Council permanent members, will not participate in the newly formed team. It was Russia's veto that blocked an extension of the U.N. monitoring regime that had been created in 2009

Joint Text Released

The following text was released by the Governments of the United States of America, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom, on the occasion of Establishing the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team.

Begin Text.

We, the participating states of the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, are aligned in our commitment to uphold international peace and security and to safeguard the global non-proliferation regime and address the threat arising from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs, which are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs).

In light of the veto which disbanded the UN Security Council’s 1718 Committee Panel of Experts this year, we hereby express our intention to establish a Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), a multilateral mechanism to monitor and report violations and evasions of the sanction measures stipulated in the relevant UNSCRs. The goal of the new mechanism is to assist the full implementation of UN sanctions on the DPRK by publishing information based on rigorous inquiry into sanctions violations and evasion attempts.

We underscore our shared determination to fully implement relevant UNSCRs regarding the DPRK, reaffirm that the path to dialogue remains open, and call on all states to join global efforts to maintain international peace and security in the face of the ongoing threats from the DPRK.