Today, we release our new report, Opportunities and Challenges for Exiled North Korean Women in the Human Rights Field.

The report explores how the human rights movement and, in particular, grant-makers, can deploy their resources to better support the active participation and leadership of exiled women and exiled women-led organisations.

We find that exiled women, albeit a minority, demonstrate a strong motivation to advance, reshape, and disrupt the existing approach of civil society to the human rights situation in their homeland, despite the barriers that currently inhibit their involvement. Our findings indicate that if the civil society space is to become more inclusive, gender-aware, and motivated to take steps to ensure the full inclusion of exiled women, dialogue between exiled women, grant-makers, and existing civil society actors is required, alongside the re-imagining of traditional funding models, conversations on organisational sustainability, and the formation of interventions that provide clear pathways for young exiled women to pursue careers in civil society.

These are not radical propositions, but rather realistic and sustainable actions designed to address existing inequalities and strengthen civil society’s response to the human rights situation in the DPRK.