Human rights advocates rallied yesterday in support of the UN’s top expert on Palestinian rights after the US imposed sanctions on her for what it called unfair criticism of Israel.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday that the US has imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, for her efforts to push the International Criminal Court to take action against US and Israeli officials.
The head of the UN Human Rights Council, Jürg Lauber, strongly criticised the US yesterday for imposing sanctions on Albanese. The move, Lauber said, undermines the independence and integrity of the UN’s human rights mechanisms.
“I regret the decision of the United States government to impose sanctions on Albanese,” Lauber said in a statement. He emphasised that Special Rapporteurs, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, are vital to the council’s mission to protect and promote human rights globally. “They must be able to carry out their mandates independently and without fear of intimidation or retaliation,” he added.
The UN expert described the sanctions imposed on her as ‘Mafia-style intimidation’. ‘No comment on mafia style intimidation techniques’, she posted on her accounts on Instagram and X. “Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.”
Other UN experts warned the move sets a dangerous precedent. Mariana Katzarova, rapporteur on human rights in Russia, said the sanctions ‘open the gates for any other government to do the same’ and described them as ‘an attack on [the] UN system as a whole’.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) echoed those concerns. The organisation’s International Justice Director Liz Evenson warned that “The US is working to dismantle the norms and institutions on which survivors of grave abuses rely.”
The former group’s chairman, Kenneth Roth, called US sanctions “an attempt to prevent prosecution of Israel’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza.”
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