UN Protests U.S. Sanctions Against Antisemitic UN Special Rapporteur

On July 9, 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the Israel-hating United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. That means she is not permitted to travel to the United States and that any assets she has in the U.S. could be frozen. The United Nations, as expected, strongly objected.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Human Rights Council because, as the White House explained, it “has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel, focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings.” The White House added that this UN body “continues to be used as a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations.”

The Trump administration’s decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the Human Rights Council’s worst of the worst special rapporteurs, is a logical follow-through.

The spokesperson for the Office of the UN Secretary General said that the imposition of such sanctions on UN special rapporteurs is “unacceptable” and sets a “dangerous precedent.” The UN claimed that its special rapporteurs like Ms. Albanese have official mandates they are performing as UN “experts,” which entitle them to UN privileges and immunities under the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the UN.

However, the fact that special rapporteurs are covered by the Convention’s grant of “immunity from legal process of every kind” imposed by a UN member state does not mean that the grant is absolute. “Experts…performing missions for the United Nations shall be accorded such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the independent exercise of their functions during the period of their missions,” Article 6 of the Convention states. (Emphasis added)

The immunity applies to these experts only “in respect of words spoken or written and acts done by them in the course of the performance of their mission” for the UN, “not for the personal benefit of the individuals themselves.” (Emphasis added)

Francesca Albanese’s words and actions have grossly violated the standards of impartiality, integrity, and good faith

According to the UN Human Rights Council’s own Code of Conduct that is supposed to govern the behavior of the expert mandate-holders it appoints, the experts must uphold “the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, meaning, in particular, though not exclusively, probity, impartiality, equity, honesty and good faith.”

Francesca Albanese’s words and actions have grossly violated the standards of impartiality, integrity, and good faith expected of UN expert mandate-holders in the performance of their duties. Ms. Albanese abused her mandate to pursue her own personal antisemitic vendetta against the Jewish state of Israel and its supporters.

Ms. Albanese disqualified herself from serving as a UN special rapporteur on numerous occasions by virtue of this personal vendetta alone. For example, there is her outrageous attempt to justify Hamas’s barbaric slaughter, rape, and abductions of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 as a “reaction to Israel's oppression.” She compared Israel with the “Third Reich” and has called for the Jewish state’s suspension from the UN. And she accused the United States of being “subjugated by the Jewish Lobby” – a classic antisemitic trope.

Francesca Albanese should have been removed from her post after making such vile remarks. But instead, the UN Human Rights Council voted to extend Ms. Albanese’s mandate as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories through 2028. That is because the UN Human Rights Council – in fact, the UN system as a whole - is as bad as Ms. Albanese herself when it comes to its virulent anti-Israel bias. So, it is no surprise that Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, came to her defense and urged the United States to reverse its sanctions against Albanese. That is not likely to happen, for very good reasons.

In addition to Ms. Albanese’s “unabashed antisemitism,” as Secretary of State Rubio’s press release announcing the U.S. sanctions put it, Secretary Rubio noted several actions she took that far exceeded the scope of her mandate.

“Albanese has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries,” Secretary Rubio said. “Neither the United States nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute, making this action a gross infringement on the sovereignty of both countries.”

Secretary Rubio added that Ms. Albanese has written “threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives.”

Taking an extreme advocacy role at the ICC against Israel and writing threatening letters to American companies are activities that pro-Hamas activists would engage in.

But Francesca Albanese has demonstrated by her pro-Hamas activism that she is unfit to serve as an honest, impartial expert to report on anything to do with the Palestinians and Israel. Only the UN itself would think otherwise.

Ms. Albanese complained that the resulting sanctions levied against her by the U.S. government are going to “harm me.” That is your problem, Ms. Albanese. You brought this on yourself. Given the UN’s protests against the sanctions, it is highly unlikely that the UN and most of its members will learn anything useful from this episode and be more careful in their future appointments.

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