A duty to address human rights violations?

Abstract: This thesis concerns the impact of instrumental benefits and norms on state behaviour in international relations. This is studied on the case of the EU’s and Japan’s initiation of enforcement against North Korea in the UN Human Rights Council, which has garnered increased attention since 2013 when a commission of inquiry successfully put the issue on the international community’s agenda. I ask why these actors choose to enforce human rights against North Korea, and how it is possible for them to do so. To answer this question I develop a theoretical framework aimed at developing the research on norm development and enforcement. This framework combines a rationalist cost-benefit approach with a constructivist approach, and results in five hypothesized relationships. I use process-tracing to study official statements made by the actors at meetings in the Human Rights Council concerning the North Korean human rights situation, and find affirmation on all hypothesized relationships. I find suggestions that indicate that the human rights norm’s robustness is an underlying variable constituting the actors’ identities and thus guiding their interest to act in a certain way.