... warns top UN official

The security council's sanctions committee on North Korea will meet Monday to hear a UN humanitarian official's briefing on the impact of the sanctions. 

U.N. imposed sanctions on North Korea are adversely affecting the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid to the East Asian country, where an estimated 18 million North Koreans, nearly 70 percent of the population, are suffering from acute food shortages, UN Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, according to AFP.

The security council's sanctions committee on North Korea will meet Monday to hear a UN humanitarian official's briefing on the impact of the sanctions. 

"...sanctions may be adversely affecting this essential help," he told a special Security Council meeting on human rights in North Korea as aid agencies provide "literally a lifeline" for 13 million of them, the top UN official said. 

The stifling sanctions are controlling the international bank transfers that "have caused a slowdown in UN ground operations, affecting the delivery of food rations, health kits, and other humanitarian aid," he said in a statement, adding that the council should conduct an assessment of the human rights impact of sanctions, urging it to take action. 

The aid groups are having a hard time in getting the goods cleared through customs, as the food prices continue to soar at 160 percent since April, according to the UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca, AFP reported.

Pyongyang is accused by a UN commission of inquiry of running a vast network of prison camps, resorting to torture, arbitrary detentions among other widespread abuses, AFP noted. 

Al Hussein told the council that "the context of military tensions seems to have deepened the extremely serious human rights violations."

In 2016, the council adopted three rounds of sanctions to choke off the revenue stream to Pyongyang's military programs after Kim Jong-Un carried a sixth nuclear test and a series of advanced missile launches.