Tokyo ? The United Nations should spearhead relief efforts for North Korean refugees in China and Russia, delegates said Sunday on the final day of an international conference on human rights in North Korea.

Defectors who flee oppression and famine in North Korea often face new problems once they sneak across the border into neighboring countries. Denied legal status as immigrants or refugees, many struggle to make a living and fear being sent home, where they are often put in prison or sometimes executed as traitors.

Led by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the international community should pressure China and Russia to allow independent relief groups into border regions to help the refugees, activists said at the closing session of the two-day International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees.

“Along the border with China, tens of thousands of North Korean refugees live in hunger and in fear of forced return,” said Jack Rendler, vice chairman of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “News from increasing numbers of refugees is consistently horrible.”

Up to 150,000 North Korean migrants live in China, according to activist estimates.

If China were to classify them as refugees, they would be one step closer to receiving U.N.-supplied food and shelter. Instead, a treaty between allies China and North Korea requires Beijing to deport them.

The resolution adopted at the Tokyo meeting called on China to halt the practice.

Beijing maintains that North Koreans in its territory are not refugees under the U.N. definition because they crossed the border for economic motives, not political reasons.

South Korean activists, however, believe the refugees should be classified as political refugees because they would be subject to political persecution if they were deported to the North.

Speaking at the Tokyo conference, defector Lee Young Kuk said he was sent to the North’s harshest political prisoner camp, Yodok, after his first defection attempt failed.

He described scenes of political prisoners being skinned or buried alive.