The United Nations has moved forward in a push to hold North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un accountable for alleged crimes against humanity.

North Korea's leaders have been accused of employing murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence as well as mass starvation to prop up their regime and impose a total control over the North Korean citizens.

The U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee has approved a resolution that will urge the Security Council to refer the country’s harsh human rights violations to the International Criminal Court.

This resolution was inspired by a groundbreaking U.N. commission of inquiry resulting in a 400-page report that declared that North Korea’s human rights situation “exceeds all others in duration, intensity and horror.”

The nearly yearlong investigation by the commission involved more than 320 witnesses in public hearings and private interviews. Listed among the various human rights abuses were incidents in which a mother was forced to drown her newborn and corpses were being eaten by dogs.

The authority to refer a country to the ICC lies only with the U.N. Security Council, a 15-member body charged with maintaining global security.

The notion that their leader could be targeted by prosecutors sent North Korean officials into a furious effort to derail the resolution.

Opponents of the resolution, which including China, Russia, and Cuba, have said that the measure was politically manipulated and would set a precedent for similar targeting of other nations in the future.

This move comes just a week after North Korea released Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, the last remaining Americans held captive by the regime.

As quoted by CNN, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, So Se Pyong, has said that the United States and "other hostile forces" have fabricated the report in an attempt to "defame the dignified image of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and eventually eliminate its social system."