Afrasianet - In a first that shakes the foundations of the international human rights system, the United States dealt an unusual blow to the independence of the UN human rights system by imposing direct sanctions on the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanesi for her reports accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
It was not just a diplomatic dispute, but a legal and political confrontation that threatened the neutrality of the United Nations itself. When an international human rights mission becomes fraught with sanctions and travel bans, we are at a dangerous juncture that redefines the limits of the accountability of major powers in the modern era.
Why Francesca exclusively?
Francesca Albanese was targeted for crossing red lines for the United States and Israel, with outspoken reports accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and calling for its leaders to be held accountable before the International Criminal Court.
It also accused more than 60 companies, including major American companies, of profiting from and contributing to the aggression, which Washington considered a direct threat to its political and economic interests.
The US sanctions came in July 2025, as part of an executive order that allows the punishment of those who support legal efforts against the United States or Israel in international forums, turning Albanese into the first UN rapporteur to be officially included on the sanctions lists.
Despite the attack, Albanese steadfastly faced the decision and continued her human rights mission, stressing that the pressure would not deter her from telling the truth. This targeting provoked angry UN and human rights reactions and was seen as a threat to the independence of the rapporteur system, the rule of international law, and the right of victims to justice.
UN and Human Rights Responses: Moral Consensus Versus the Absence of Deterrence Tools
The US sanctions on Francesca Albanese have provoked widespread reactions, with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressing "deep concern", stressing that the sanctions affect the independence of the UN system of rapporteurs.
The Human Rights Council also expressed its refusal to prejudice its experts, calling for respect for their immunities. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the move as a "dangerous precedent" aimed at silencing critical human rights voices. The spokesman for the Secretary-General stressed that the sanctions are "completely unacceptable" and represent a fundamental threat to the work of the human rights system.
These positions reflect an international moral consensus to reject the targeting of rapporteurs, but they remain within the framework of symbolic condemnation without executive tools that oblige the aggressor state to retreat. Despite their moral significance, neither the UN nor its human rights organizations have coercive means to lift sanctions, making effective protection contingent on intensifying political and media pressure.
Sanctions against UN rapporteurs: nature and legal significance
UN special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the United Nations, usually through the Human Rights Council, with specific mandates related to monitoring the human rights situation in a particular country or on a specific substantive issue.
Rapporteurs are not traditional staff members of the United Nations and do not receive their instructions from States; they carry out their work in a voluntary and independent capacity to ensure objectivity and impartiality.
Despite their independence, they operate under the umbrella of the United Nations and enjoy its moral and legal support. It is important to emphasize that the views of the Special Rapporteurs do not necessarily reflect the view of the United Nations as an organization, but rather reflect their jurisprudence based on international standards.
The rapporteurs' reports and recommendations do not have direct legal binding force, but they are of great moral and ethical importance, as they put pressure on the states concerned and draw the attention of the international community to violations or issues raised.
Imposing sanctions on UN rapporteurs means that a state takes punitive action against a person serving as special rapporteur for acting within his or her mandate.
Sanctions usually take the form of national blacklisting, the consequent freezing of financial assets, if any, and travel bans to that country, and possibly also preventing citizens and companies from doing business with it.
These tools are often used by states against human rights violators or political opponents; however, their use against a UN human rights expert violates established diplomatic and legal norms.
At the legal level, United Nations rapporteurs enjoy immunities and privileges designed to protect them from any harassment or legal consequences as a result of the performance of their functions.
The 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations expressly grants experts on mission the immunity necessary to ensure their independence, including immunity from any form of legal process or harassment for their words, writings or acts committed in the course of their duties.
Accordingly, the imposition of a penalty on a special rapporteur for a report or statement made by him directly undermines his full judicial immunity and raises the question of the extent to which the State concerned respected its international obligations.
The legal significance of such a procedure is serious and multifaceted. On the one hand, this means that the sanctioning state does not implicitly recognize the independence of the special rapporteur and treat him as a political or security adversary, rather than as an impartial expert whose reports work within UN frameworks.
On the other hand, this action threatens the principle of international cooperation enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. Article 105 of the Charter – together with the 1946 Convention – recognized that United Nations officials and experts must enjoy the privileges necessary for the independent performance of their functions.
The 1947 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies provides that experts of United Nations organizations, such as the Human Rights Council, enjoy immunity from legal process in the performance of their international functions.
Defying these legal safeguards through unilateral sanctions sends a message that the state is prepared to bypass international law and diplomatic norms if the UN expert's views contradict its policies.
Thus, the imposition of sanctions here violates a fundamental principle of international law that States must respect their contractual obligations towards the international organization and its experts, and also constitutes an impugnment to the global rule of law system.
A precedent that shakes the constants: has the immunity of UN rapporteurs been broken?
Many analysts describe the imposition of US sanctions on the UN rapporteur as unprecedented. Over the past decades, there have been no known cases in which a country has placed a UN special rapporteur on an official sanctions list.
The United Nations itself has emphasized that this action sets a dangerous precedent that must not be repeated. However, reference can be made to some related incidents that reflect tension between States and UN rapporteurs, even if they do not amount to direct financial sanctions.
For example, some States have often refused to allow UN rapporteurs to enter their territories or cooperate with them, as an indirect obstruction of their work.
Israel, for example, has often accused the special rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories of bias and refused to receive or cooperate with them.
In the case of Francesca Albanese herself before the imposition of US sanctions, Israel announced in early 2024 a ban on its entry into the occupied territories and even publicly called for the termination of its mandate following statements deemed unacceptable by the Israeli government.
Such a ban represented an attempt to isolate the rapporteur and cripple her ability to gather information on the ground, but it remained within the scope of normal diplomatic procedures (such as not issuing an entry visa) and did not amount to criminalizing or punishing her financially.
UN experts consider that a country's sanction of an independent UN expert is an attack on the UN system as a whole, as it undermines the mechanism that states themselves have established to hold each other accountable in the field of human rights.
Perhaps a partial analogy to this incident can be found in the policy of the previous US administration (during President Trump's first term in 2020) when sanctions were imposed on ICC officials (such as ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda) for their investigations into alleged war crimes, as their assets were frozen and they were denied entry to the United States at the time.
Many saw the move as targeting the independence of international justice. In the current scenario (the Trump administration's return to power in 2025), that policy has expanded to include the punishment of UN experts such as Albanesi.
Reports indicate that the same US administration that sanctioned Albanesi had imposed sanctions a month earlier on several ICC judges after the court issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister and other officials.
These steps reflect an escalating approach that critics see as a "lawfare" used by a powerful state to shield its allies from accountability by criminalizing those who seek to achieve such accountability internationally.
Despite the structural difference between an international tribunal and UN rapporteurs, the philosophy is the same: use national sanctions as a weapon to obstruct the instruments of international justice.
Despite previous examples of attempts to obstruct or threaten rapporteurs by states annoyed by their reports, turning this refusal or frustration into formal economic and legal sanctions against a UN expert exercising his functions within his mandate is a new and worrying development.
It is a clear transcendence of traditional diplomatic protest to the level of direct retaliatory punitive action. For this reason, the sanctions imposed on Albanesi were considered an unprecedented precedent in the history of the United Nations, and the international organization warned of their danger and negative repercussions on the independence of its human rights system.
It is clear that the effectiveness of the UN system in protecting rapporteurs depends on the cooperation of States and their respect for the law. When a state—especially if it is large and influential—violates these controls, the United Nations cannot force it to back down, but relies on diplomatic and media pressure and the moral standing of the state.
In the case of Albanesi, UN condemnation and international embarrassment had some effect; Washington found itself isolated in this position and under a barrage of criticism from allies and adversaries alike.
This in itself is part of the moral protection that the UN system provides to its rapporteurs: to make the price of targeting them politically and morally high enough to deter other states from repeating the matter.
In light of this dangerous precedent, there is an urgent need to immunize the UN system of rapporteurs from politicization and reprisals, by establishing more solid institutional protection mechanisms and ensuring effective international solidarity that criminalizes the targeting of human rights experts because of their positions.
The Human Rights Council should also develop an emergency protocol to respond to such situations, including activating the moral accountability of violating states. Continued silence or verbal condemnation threatens to collapse the final firewall of the human rights system and tempts other States to repeat the act, putting the entire international system at an existential crossroads.
UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Violations in Israel and Palestine Resigns
Instead, the three members of the UN commission tasked with investigating human rights violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories resigned from their posts, saying it was time to renew its composition, a UN spokesman said Monday.
The committee was established in 2021 and has faced heavy criticism from Israel.
In her resignation letter, the resigned South African commission's chairwoman, Navi Pillay, 83, who previously served as president of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, cited her age as one of the reasons for the decision.
Australian member Chris Sidotti, 74, said this was the "right time" to renew the composition of the committee, while Indian member Miloon Kothari, who is in his late sixties, said he was "honoured" to serve on the committee.
Based on these resignations, the President of the UN Human Rights Council, Jörg Lauber, asked member states to propose new names for the committee's membership by August 31.
Council spokesman Pascal Sim said the aim was to appoint the new experts at the beginning of November, after the three resigned members present their final report at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York.
Denial of genocide
The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry confirmed in mid-March that Israel has committed acts of genocide and violations against Palestinians in all occupied territories since the seventh of last October.
During the public hearings in Geneva, the Commission said that the Israeli army had a map of health facilities and their terms of reference, which had been deliberately destroyed, and that the Commission confirmed that it had evidence of deliberate Israeli attacks on health institutions and facilities.
She pointed out that there is a disregard and denial by the international community of the violations against the Palestinians.
Palestinian prisoners are physically and psychologically assaulted in a manner that insults their dignity, and they are prevented from making their voices heard to punish the perpetrators of crimes against them and ensure that they do not recur.
In its previous report, the committee added that any child born today in Gaza faces the risk of death, whether during infancy or after growing up, in addition to children suffering from health dilemmas as a result of water pollution, cold and hunger.
Impunity
In its report exactly 4 months ago, the Committee confirmed that the legal definition it adopts confirms that what is happening in the Palestinian territories is genocide.
The (outgoing) UN Commission Chairperson Navi Pillay said that the exculpatory statements and proceedings of Israeli leaders, and the ineffectiveness of the military justice system in prosecuting cases and convicting perpetrators, send a clear message to members of the Israeli security forces that they can continue to commit such acts without fear of accountability.
At the time, the Committee stressed that accountability through the International Criminal Court and national courts, through their domestic laws or the exercise of universal jurisdiction, was essential to ensuring the rule of law and justice for victims.
In response to the report of the UN Commission of Inquiry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN Human Rights Council an "anti-Israel circus called the Human Rights Council" and accused it of anti-Semitism in March.