Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Anelay of St Johns on 2 February (HL5229), and in the light of Freedom of Information Act 2000 Request 0986-15, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s stated rationale for each project undertaken in North Korea and the distinction between human rights and humanitarian work, whether they will increase funding for human rights projects in North Korea, and what was the total UK funding for projects with a human rights rationale between 30 September 2013 and 8 October 2015.

The existing bilateral programme fund, run by our Embassy in Pyongyang, has contributed to a number of projects aimed at improving the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). These include helping to improve food and nutrition for people in rural areas and equipment for the physically disabled. In addition, our funding of English language projects and visits to the UK for government officials, exposes DPRK citizens to other values and cultures. We assess that many of our existing projects contain a human rights element, without strictly being defined as a human rights project. In the coming year we will continue to fund such projects where possible and will assess future human rights projects under the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy. The amount spent on projects categorised as containing a human rights element between 3 September 2013-8 October 2015 was £270,046.61.