A/HRC/4/15 page 5 II. ANALYSIS OF KEY CONCERNS A. Situation 4. Despite the country’s formal commitment to human rights in various national laws and under the human rights treaties mentioned, the human rights situation remains grave in a number of key areas. It will be recalled that the country has a non-democratic regime which adheres to a “military first” policy; this depletes the resources of the country and creates budgetary distortions in favour of the ruling elite and militarization, in the face of many shortages and deprivations suffered by the population. In 2006 that situation was aggravated by missile and nuclear tests carried out by the authorities of the country, in the face of global condemnation. These irresponsible acts undermined the possibility of aid from other countries, which reconsidered their contributions in view of the provocative nature of the regime. Many violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights persist in the country. They can be seen through the perspectives described below. B. Sustenance: rights pertaining to food, nutrition and related matters 5. As noted in the previous reports of the Special Rapporteur, the country has been suffering from a severe food shortage since the 1990s.2 That shortage was caused by both natural disasters and mismanagement on the part of the authorities, aggravated by the overemphasis on militarization and failure to generate food security due to unsustainable agricultural development. In the 1990s, the country started to accept food aid from outside the country, particularly through the World Food Programme (WFP). In 2002 the authorities moved away from the age-old Public Distribution System whereby the State provided rations to the people, to a more market-oriented experiment whereby people were to be paid higher wages and were expected to fend for themselves by accessing food through the market system. This led to major disparities due to a substantial rise in food prices, with various vulnerable groups marginalized in the process. However, in 2005, the authorities started to clamp down on the various markets by banning cereal trading for fear of losing a grip on the population and have since reimposed the Public Distribution System. 6. In 2005-2006, the authorities also demanded from the international presence a shift from humanitarian aid to a more development-oriented framework, and in the process scaled down the presence of various foreign humanitarian agencies in the country. One implied consequence was to reduce the monitoring of the aid coming into the country. While the 2005 harvest was a welcome improvement over the harvests of previous years, in the middle of 2006 major floods wreaked havoc on the harvest, resulting in a severe food shortfall. In 2006, WFP began its two-year Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation aiming to deliver food aid to 1.9 million people, at a cost of US$ 102 million and requiring 150,000 tons of commodities. 2 See further, Human Rights Watch, “A Matter of Survival: the North Korean government’s control of food and the risk of hunger”, Human Rights Watch, New York, vol. 18, No. 3 (C), 2006. A consistently balanced local source of information is the organization known as Good Friends. See further for the political impact of the nuclear test: International Crisis Group, “North Korea’s Nuclear Test”, Asia briefing No. 56, Seoul/Brussels, 13 November 2006.