China provided $150,000 in funding for Saul’s mandate in 2024. For more information on funding to UN Special Procedures, see UN Watch’s Special Procedures Funding Database.

Below are some of the report’s most striking statements and recommendations, with excerpts in Saul’s own words.

1. Accuses the U.S. of Possible Crimes Against Humanity

The report characterizes that U.S. military strikes on drug-trafficking vessels since September 2025 as unlawful killings and states: “The organized policy of multiple murders may further involve a systematic attack on a civilian population, constituting crimes against humanity.” (Para. 25)

2. Demands States Withhold Military Assets and Intelligence From the U.S.

After accusing the United States of committing “crimes against humanity,” Saul writes that “Other States must refrain from aiding or assisting in the commission of these violations, including by refusing to share intelligence or make military assets available.” (Para. 25)

3. Calls on U.S. Leaders to Face International Prosecution

Furthermore, for the U.S. actions against drug-trafficking vessels, Saul states that “all perpetrators, including military and civilian leaders, must be investigated and held accountable in line with international law.” Previously, on social media, Saul has called for the arrest of President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for “mass murder” due to the administration’s targeting of drug traffickers. Saul also has a history of meaningful engagement with the ICC. With that, it can be reasonably interpreted that Saul’s report is calling for top American officials, including the President, to come under ICC investigation and possible prosecution. (Para. 25)

4. Accuses the U.S. of Aggression Against Venezuela and Unlawful Threats Against Other Countries

Saul characterizes the January 2026 U.S. military operation in Venezuela as “aggression,” alleging violations of Venezuelan sovereignty, the right to life and liberty, and the prohibition on transboundary abduction. He further states that “the United States has also illegally threatened force against Colombia, Cuba and Mexico” and alleges that it participated in “possibly unlawful military attacks” in Ecuador in May 2026 and Venezuela in June 2026, followed by a lack of accountability. (Para. 26) 

5. Argues That Violent Drug Cartels Should Generally Not Be Classified as Terrorist Organizations

Saul acknowledges that some criminal groups use extreme violence to terrorize populations and coerce governments, but argues that terrorism requires a political or ideological purpose. He concludes: “An organized criminal group that is foremost motivated by profit—even if, to that end, its violence intimidates a population or compels a Government—will not qualify as terrorist.” (Para. 17)

6. Advocates Legalizing Drugs to Weaken Criminal Cartels

Saul states that governments “should not only decriminalize personal possession of drugs but consider legalization and responsible regulation.” He argues that “legalization is ultimately the only tool that could seriously reduce drug profits” and proposes regulating supply through medical prescriptions, specialist pharmacies, licensed retail outlets and consumption premises. (Para. 57, 66(c))

7. Suggests Negotiating Ceasefires With Criminal Gangs

Saul recommends strengthening government institutions and law enforcement in areas controlled by criminal organizations, but adds: “In certain contexts, it may be justifiable to tactically engage criminal groups in ‘ceasefires’ or negotiations to mitigate violence, pending longer-term strategic efforts to reassert State capacities.” (Para. 63)

8. Criticizes U.S. Sanctions Against Colombia’s President

Saul argues that U.S. counterterrorism measures can undermine international cooperation, stating that “the United States counterproductively sanctioned the President of Colombia and associates in 2025 for alleged links to ‘narco-terrorism’ and his ‘total peace’ plan to control drugs.” He later characterizes the sanctions as a misuse of unilateral sanctions. (Paras. 43, 60)

The post China-Funded UN Expert Slams U.S. in Report to UNGA This Week appeared first on UN Watch.

By Dina Rovner, Legal Advisor at UN Watch

The report released today by Francesca Albanese is presented as an examination of Israel’s “destruction of truth,” but in reality is itself an assault on truth. This latest iteration of the genocide canard advances a self-sealing theory in which interpretations that support the genocide charge are accepted without question, while contrary evidence is dismissed and transformed into proof of “mediacide.” Thus, Israeli evidence that purported journalists belonged to terrorist organizations becomes a “smear.” Evidence that Hamas operated from hospitals becomes “humanitarian camouflage.” Challenges to famine findings become “genocide denial.” Media outlets that report Israeli arguments are accused of amplifying propaganda, while social-media platforms that carry them face suggestions of complicity. Her framework leaves remarkably little room for legitimate scrutiny, competing evidence or reasoned debate.

Central to Albanese’s charge is the unsupported assertion that Israel intentionally targeted Gazan journalists for “murder” in order to “silence Palestinian journalism” (paras. 13, 19). Albanese dismisses as “smear campaigns” (para. 26) Israeli evidence that 170 of the journalists killed in Gaza after October 7, 2023 were Hamas or PIJ combatants, refusing to engage with it. Yet more than 60 of these have already been admitted by Hamas and PIJ as their combatants through martyr notices published by the terrorist groups. Indeed, since June 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has removed 27 “journalists” from its lists of “journalists and media workers killed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (IOPT),” after determining that they were Hamas or PIJ combatants.

Journalists admitted by Hamas or PIJ to be combatants include:

• Yahya Omar Abu Manih, eulogized by Hamas as a “martyred field commander.”
• Ahmed Abu Mahti, eulogized by Hamas as a squad leader in Hamas’ Fawzi Abu Qara (al-Khulafa) Battalion in the Northern Brigade.
• Ahmed Al-Helou, eulogized by Hamas as a “mujahid” in the Northern Khan Younis Brigade.
• Assem Adli Ahmed Al-Barsh, eulogized by Hamas as a Qassam Brigades group commander in the Northern Brigade’s Western Battalion.
• Amin Fathi Hamdan, eulogized by Hamas as a platoon commander
• Mohamed Nabil Al-Zaq, confirmed by PIJ as a commander and seen in a PIJ combat training video.
• Mahmoud Abu Shirby, eulogized by PIJ as a commander.
• Saeed Abu Hassanin, admitted by Hamas as a commander.
• Mohamed Jarghoun, eulogized by Hamas as a “Qassami mujahid martyr.”
• Ahmed Abu Eisha, eulogized by PIJ as a platoon commander.
• Mohamed Skheil, eulogized by PIJ as a commander killed inside the Shifa Hospital.
• Tarek Skheil, eulogized by PIJ as a commander who posed as a “journalist” and used Shifa Hospital as a base. 

The fact that even Hamas and PIJ contradict one of Albanese’s principal accusations is emblematic of the report’s broader deficiencies. 

Albanese claims to expose how “the destruction of truth has become integral to the destruction of a people.” Yet, as the following sections demonstrate, her report substitutes selective evidence, unsupported inferences and distorted legal analysis for rigorous fact-finding. Far from exposing an “assault on truth,” it perpetuates one—under the imprimatur of the United Nations. 

1. Genocide Assumed, Not Proven 

Albanese’s analysis begins with the conclusion it purports to prove. She refers to Israel’s “genocidal destruction” and describes the current hostilities as “the genocidal phase” of Israel’s “long colonial project” (para. 1). Later in the report, she describes the conflict as the “ongoing genocide in Palestine” (paras. 41, 91) and as established fact, referring to “the genocide” and Israel’s  “genocidal campaign” (paras. 28, 42, 64, 70, 81). In circular fashion, she then presents Israel’s alleged targeting of journalists, which she terms “mediacide,” as further evidence of the premise she has already assumed, declaring it “probative of genocidal intent” (para. 41).

Even Albanese’s own authorities undermine her attempt to infer genocidal intent from the alleged systematic killing of journalists. In paragraph 9, she claims that “systematically killing those who document atrocities” may be evidence of an intent to destroy the protected group, citing Bosnia v. Serbia (at para. 373) and Croatia v. Serbia (at para. 148). Yet neither cited passage addresses the killing of journalists or witnesses, much less establishes that such conduct is evidence of genocidal intent. Instead, both establish the stringent standard for inferring genocidal intent from a pattern of conduct under which genocidal intent must be “the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.” 

Moreover, in paragraph 89, she herself offers a different explanation for the same alleged conduct—claiming that Israel targeted journalists “to conceal” alleged “mass atrocities” and “also to erode the very possibility of documenting them.” An alleged intent to conceal atrocities or suppress their documentation is not the specific intent to destroy a protected group required for genocide. Yet in paragraph 91, she recasts Israel’s alleged targeting of journalists as “intrinsic to the ongoing genocide.” Albanese neither establishes the specific genocidal intent required under international law nor explains how her allegations satisfy the stringent ICJ standard she herself invokes.   

2. “Mediacide”: An Invented Concept Presented as Proof of Genocide 

“Mediacide” is not a recognized international crime or established legal category. Yet Albanese uses this invented concept to link fundamentally different forms of conduct to genocide. In paragraph 90, she describes “mediacide” as a “single, integrated phenomenon” that  encompasses the alleged targeting of Palestinian journalists, Israeli media coverage, and the reporting practices of Western media and digital platforms. In paragraph 91, she declares these phenomena “intrinsic to the ongoing genocide,” without establishing how they demonstrate the specific intent to destroy a protected group required under international law.

Moreover, Albanese stretches “mediacide” to cover almost anything that affects the information environment—from the alleged killing of journalists and destruction of media infrastructure to Israeli government advertising, television commentary, Western media coverage and social-media moderation. These are fundamentally different acts, governed by different legal standards. Grouping them together under a single label does not turn them into a single legal wrong, much less evidence of genocide.

3. Combatants Recast as Journalists 

Albanese misrepresents international humanitarian law when she sweepingly claims in paragraph 7 that “[j]ournalists in armed conflict are civilians, protected unless they directly participate in hostilities,” citing Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and ICRC Rule 34. In paragraph 15 she reiterates that the “civilian status” of journalists is “presumed,” citing also the ICRC’s Interpretive Guidance. But that is only part of the story. Albanese omits that the same ICRC guidance she cites also recognizes that members of an organized armed group whose “continuous combat function” involves the preparation, execution or command of military operations do not qualify as civilians at all—even when they are not carrying out a particular attack. A Hamas or PIJ fighter or commander does not suddenly benefit from civilian status just because they simultaneously work as a journalist.

Albanese compounds this selective presentation of the law by dismissing evidence of journalists’ military roles. At the outset, she characterizes allegations of terrorist affiliation as journalists being “smeared” while “documenting the destruction of their own society” (para. 3(a)), and in paragraph 7 warns that “mischaracterizing journalists as ‘terrorists’ or combatants cannot negate” their protection. In fact, the opposite applies here: mischaracterizing a combatant as a journalist does not transform him into a protected civilian. 

As discussed above, Albanese’s blanket dismissal of Israeli evidence as “undisclosed or discredited” is contradicted by Hamas and PIJ’s own identification of individuals listed as journalists as their combatants, as well as CPJ’s subsequent removal of 27 names from its database after determining that they were Hamas or PIJ combatants. CPJ expressly condemned “the misrepresentation of combatants as journalists or media workers.” The problem is not new. During the 2014 Gaza conflict, UNESCO withdrew its condemnation of the killing of Abdullah Murtaja as a journalist after evidence emerged that he was a member of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova expressly deplored “attempts to instrumentalize the profession of journalists by combatants.” 

4. Journalist Deaths Do Not Prove Israel Targeted Journalists 

Albanese repeatedly treats the killing of journalists as evidence that Israel deliberately targeted them because of their work. In paragraph 3(a), she describes the “systematic targeting” of Palestinian journalists and claims that it “has progressively deprived the world of its primary witnesses” of Israel’s conduct. But these are distinct propositions. The fact that a journalist was killed in an Israeli strike does not establish that the journalist was deliberately targeted, much less that the purpose was to suppress reporting.

Albanese makes a similar leap in claiming that the destruction of more than 150 journalists’ homes “signals an intent to persecute the media sector” (para. 18). But a tally of destroyed homes does not establish that they were deliberately targeted because of their connection to journalists. 

5. Destroyed Media Buildings: Motive Assumed Without Evidence 

A media facility can become a military objective if, in the circumstances of the particular case, its nature, location, purpose or use makes an effective contribution to military action and its destruction, capture or neutralization offers a definite military advantage.  

Albanese dispenses with that inquiry. In paragraph 35, she cites the destruction of Palestine Tower, damage to approximately 50 media offices and the destruction of Press House and declares that the “early and intense targeting of media institutions likely indicates an explicit intention to suppress reporting from the ground.” Yet Albanese simply assumes that the media offices were the intended targets and that suppressing reporting was the objective, without offering evidence for either conclusion.  

Palestine Tower illustrates the speculation underlying Albanese’s conclusion. Israel gave an entirely different explanation at the time for the strike, identifying the target as “military infrastructure used by senior Hamas terrorist operatives for carrying out terrorist activity.” Reporting from the time also identified Hamas offices in the tower. Albanese does not address this evidence. Nor does she offer evidence to support her claim that Israel’s actual objective was to silence journalists. The intelligence and contemporaneous targeting assessments that would shed light on the strike’s actual purpose are not publicly available, and Albanese offers no indication that she reviewed them. Yet she attributes to Israel a motive she cannot substantiate.   

The Press House example fares no better. Publicly available information does not establish precisely how or why the building was destroyed. Yet Albanese treats its destruction as evidence of an Israeli campaign to suppress journalism, again substituting speculation for evidence.  

6. Hamas Erased From Gaza’s “Information Environment” 

Albanese claims to analyze Israel’s war “on and through the media” (para. 1), which she characterizes as Israel’s “destruction of truth” (summary), while effectively excluding Hamas from her analytical framework. She focuses instead on Israel’s alleged targeting of journalists, its “architecture of information control,” and the global media’s amplification of Israeli narratives (para. 3(b)). Yet Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007 and exercises coercive power over the environment in which Palestinian journalists operate.

Hamas’s repression of journalists is well documented. In 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Hamas violations against journalists during the war were “vastly underreported.” The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate told CPJ that journalists faced threats, interrogations, beatings, arrests, publication bans, interference with content and surveillance, and that many practiced self-censorship to avoid retaliation. Journalists described being beaten and threatened by Hamas security forces and prevented from covering anti-Hamas protests. This predates the current war. During the 2014 Gaza conflict, the Foreign Press Association protested Hamas’s threats and pressure against foreign journalists, reporting that journalists had been “harassed, threatened or questioned” over their reporting. Correspondents, including Italian journalist Gabriel Barbati and Polish journalist Wojciech Cegielski reported on Hamas violations against civilians during the 2014 war only after leaving Gaza. 

Although Albanese briefly acknowledges that Hamas has threatened journalists covering protests against it (para. 16), this fact disappears from her analysis of the “destruction of truth” within Gaza. Instead, she portrays Palestinian journalists as continuing  “to bear witness” despite “bombardment, displacement, hunger, and exhaustion,” and declares that “every image, fragment of video and testimony” sent from Gaza “stands as an act of resistance against colonial erasure” (para. 5). By scrutinizing purported Israeli influence over reporting while failing to incorporate Hamas’s documented control, intimidation and censorship of journalists into her analysis, Albanese presents a fundamentally distorted account of the information environment she claims to examine.

7. A Double Standard for Evidence: Contrary Evidence Becomes “Disinformation” 

Albanese repeatedly brands information that contradicts her narrative as “disinformation,” “denial” or “humanitarian camouflage,” while presenting her own disputed and unverified claims as fact. In paragraph 60, she describes challenges to famine warnings and even “questioning the reliability of humanitarian assessments” as “denial.” In paragraphs 69–70, she attacks media outlets for reporting Israeli arguments concerning evacuation orders, human shields and the military use of civilian facilities, dismissing these arguments as “humanitarian camouflage.” She likewise describes claims that Hamas operates from hospitals and other civilian sites as “unverified.”

Yet there were ample grounds to question the famine assessments. In March 2024, the IPC projected that famine was imminent in northern Gaza. Three months later, its Famine Review Committee concluded that the available evidence did not indicate that famine was occurring, while acknowledging major gaps in the evidence on food consumption, nutrition and mortality and a “very high level of uncertainty.” 

Even the IPC’s August 2025 famine finding was highly contested on methodological grounds. The Famine Review Committee acknowledged limitations in the malnutrition data and the absence of direct evidence of nutrition-related mortality, while critics challenged the data, thresholds and assumptions used to reach the finding. 

Albanese applies the same tactic to UNRWA. She condemns the “amplification of unsubstantiated allegations” against the agency (para. 68), yet the United Nations’ own Office of Internal Oversight Services found evidence indicating that nine UNRWA employees may have participated in the October 7 attacks, and UNRWA terminated them. 

In paragraph 68, Albanese refers to “unverified or false Israeli claims” that Hamas operates from hospitals and other civilian sites. Yet the evidence concerning Al-Shifa alone is substantial. The U.S. intelligence community assessed with “high confidence” that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used Al-Shifa and sites beneath it for command infrastructure, command-and-control activities, weapons storage and holding hostages. Israeli forces also uncovered a tunnel network and weapons at the hospital. Released hostages testified that they had been held or taken to hospitals, while security-camera footage showed armed Hamas terrorists bringing two October 7 hostages into Al-Shifa.  

Albanese repeatedly criticizes media outlets for what she considers inadequate verification of Israeli claims, yet fails to apply the same scrutiny to evidence supporting her own conclusions. This selective treatment of evidence is particularly troubling because the Code of Conduct requires Special Procedures mandate holders to rely on “objective, reliable information” from “relevant credible sources,” to “duly cross-check” information to the best extent possible, and to act with “impartiality” and “even-handedness.”  

Her treatment of evidence falls short of these standards. In the introduction, Albanese quotes an alleged Israeli soldier as saying, “Whoever writes an article or works on a laptop is like someone carrying a Kalashnikov and attacking us” (para. 3(a)). Her only source is a submission by Addameer. She does not identify the soldier, provide the circumstances of the statement or cite any corroborating evidence. Even if authentic, the statement is anecdotal. The views of an unidentified soldier cannot establish IDF policy or prove that Israel targets journalists because of their work. Yet Albanese places the quotation immediately after alleging that Israel systematically kills and intimidates journalists to suppress documentation of its actions.

The same double standard appears in her treatment of Palestinian sources. Albanese describes Palestinian journalists as the world’s “primary witnesses” to the “destruction of their own society” (para. 3(a)) and declares that “every image, fragment of video and testimony” sent from Palestinian territory is an “act of resistance against colonial erasure” (para. 5). These sweeping assertions presume the reliability of Palestinian-produced material. She does not explain how such material is verified, distinguish verified evidence from unverified claims, or acknowledge that Palestinian sources may also require corroboration. 

This is consistent with her broader record. As UN Watch has documented, Albanese has repeatedly amplified false or unverified claims against Israel, including claims originating with Hamas-controlled authorities, in one case even admitting that she did so to be “provocative.” In May 2025, she urged the media to stop identifying Gaza casualty figures as coming from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health and instead report the figures simply as people “Israel killed.” 

Albanese may disagree with evidence that challenges her conclusions. But dismissing contrary evidence as “denial,” “propaganda” or “humanitarian camouflage,” while accepting claims that support her narrative without comparable scrutiny, is not impartial fact-finding. It is selective treatment of evidence designed to reinforce a predetermined conclusion. 

8. Western Media Condemned for Reporting Israel’s Side 

In a distortion of ordinary journalism, Albanese attacks major Western media outlets, including BBC, CNN, and The New York Times for reporting Israeli claims and arguments as though reporting them amounts to endorsing them. Her targets are particularly striking: these same outlets have published extensive reporting highly critical of Israel and its conduct in Gaza. Yet Albanese accuses them of amplifying Israeli “humanitarian camouflage,” including claims concerning evacuation orders, human shields and Hamas’s use of civilian facilities (paras. 69–70), and charges them with reproducing narratives that “obscure, justify or legitimize atrocity crimes while marginalizing Palestinian voices, evidence and international law” (para. 90).  

In one example, Albanese says Western media “frequently reproduced” Israel’s portrayal of evacuation orders and safe zones as measures to protect civilians “without challenging it” (para. 69). Her supporting footnote cites an April 2024 New York Times report on preparations for an Israeli operation in Rafah. Yet that article did not simply reproduce Israel’s position. It reported that Israel planned to relocate civilians to an expanded humanitarian zone, but also noted that more than one million Palestinians were sheltering in Rafah and that the proposed zone was already overflowing and lacked adequate clean water and sanitation. It quoted a Palestinian former official asking, “Where do these million people go?” and reported U.S. and U.N. concerns about protecting civilians. Far from supporting Albanese’s accusation, the New York Times article she cites directly contradicts it.  

The same problem appears in her treatment of Hamas’s use of hospitals. Albanese complains that “unverified claims that Hamas operates from hospitals and other civilian sites” lent credibility to narratives justifying attacks on medical facilities (para. 70). But reporting an allegation, identifying its source and examining the evidence is not the same as adopting the allegation as fact. CNN, for example, repeatedly attributed the claims to Israel, reported Hamas’s denials and distinguished what it could independently verify from what it could not. After visiting Al-Shifa, CNN explicitly told viewers that what it had seen was “not proof of a Hamas command center,” while reporting the evidence presented by Israel and the competing claims about what it showed. Albanese’s characterization therefore obscures the distinction between reporting a contested claim and endorsing it.

In addressing the question of “human shield,” Albanese notes that the New York Times referred to “human shields” 176 times and the BBC 81 times, presenting the frequency itself as evidence that Western media adopted an Israeli “framing” of civilian deaths (para. 70). But counting the words proves nothing. Albanese does not show whether the references were allegations attributed to Israel, findings reported from other sources, statements challenged by the outlet, or conclusions supported by evidence. Nor does she establish that the underlying allegation was false. 

9. Stretching the Law to Manufacture Liability 

Albanese repeatedly invokes international criminal law to transform speech, journalism and commercial activity by private actors into components of genocide. But the authorities she cites do not support the conclusions she draws from them.

Her reliance on the Rwanda “Media Case,” Prosecutor v. Nahimana, is one example. Albanese claims that statements by Israeli presenters and commentators amount to direct and public incitement to genocide and says that their being “unchallenged and unrepudiated” engages the responsibility of the media organizations themselves (paras. 61-62). But Nahimana does not establish such a sweeping rule. The Appeals Chamber stressed that the specific crime requires a direct public appeal to commit genocide, made with the intent to incite genocide. It expressly distinguished such incitement from hate speech and incitement to violence, holding that speech must amount to more than a “vague or indirect suggestion.” The tribunal examined the specific broadcasts, the intent behind them and the individual defendants’ responsibility for their dissemination. 

The facts of Nahimana also bear little resemblance to Albanese’s allegations against Israeli media. The case concerned RTLM broadcasts that directly incited the killing of Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide. Albanese, by contrast, relies on a handful of selected statements by Israeli presenters and commentators, without adequately examining their context, meaning or the intent of the speakers. Instead, she characterizes them as direct and public incitement to genocide and invokes Nahimana to suggest that media organizations bear responsibility for statements left “unchallenged and unrepudiated” (paras. 61-62). But the judgment provides no basis for drawing such sweeping conclusions from isolated statements without establishing the required elements of the crime.  

Albanese makes the same legal leap when accusing social-media companies of potential complicity in international crimes. She says Google and X accepted Israeli government advertising that disputed famine claims and other allegations against Israel (paras. 50, 85). From there, she jumps to the possibility of criminal complicity (para. 88), citing Furundžija, a war-crimes judgment from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

But Furundžija does not establish criminal liability merely for accepting payment to publish an advertisement. It requires assistance that had a “substantial effect” on the commission of a crime, together with knowledge that the assistance facilitated the crime. Albanese establishes neither. She identifies no international crime that was substantially assisted by a Google or X advertisement, no evidence that carrying the advertisement facilitated such a crime and no evidence that the platforms accepted it knowing that it would do so.

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At the UN Human Rights Council, UN health rapporteur Tlaleng Mofokeng presented her final report, receiving praise from South Africa, Palestine, The Arab Group, and multiple NGO’s including Amnesty International. However, UN Watch’s recent report, From Watchdogs to Idealogues, exposed her unprofessionalism and ideological radicalism. Hillel Neuer took the floor to call out her misconduct.

Highlights from the UN Human Rights Council, June 17, 2026:

Special Rapporteur Tlaleng Mofokeng: “The failure of states to adopt an anti racist, anti-colonial, and dignity-based approaches through extractive capitalistic practices, pillaging of resources, coloniality, genocides, and then crushes people under the weight of indignity. Health cannot be realized without dignity.”

South Africa: “South Africa commends her distinguished tenure grounded in dignity, equality, and inclusion.”

Palestinian Delegation (PLO): “We thank the Special Rapporteur for her principled voice and solidarity.”

The Arab Group: “The Arab group thanks the Special Rapporteur and we commend her prioritization.”

Center for Reproductive Rights: “We celebrate the incredible legacy of Dr. T. She has made clear the intersectional links between colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and power.”

Planned Parenthood Federation: “We also commend your courage in documenting genocidal acts perpetrated in Gaza.”

Amnesty International and 36 NGOs: “I’m a proud African trans woman delivering this statement on behalf of 37 feminist organizations. We commend the Special Rapporteur for calling for the decriminalization of abortion and sex work.

She has recognized Israel’s genocide. We call on this Council and its Special Rapporteurs to build progressively on Dr. Mofokeng’s considerable legacy of body of work.”

UNHRC President: “Thank you. I call on United Nations Watch.”

Hillel Neuer, UN Watch: “Special Rapporteur Mofokeng, your report focuses on human dignity, including protection from exploitation.

Now, on page 21, you refer to sex workers. In that regard, you’ve published an article for Teen Vogue magazine encouraging adolescents to view prostitution as legitimate work.

Given the widespread exploitation, trafficking, and abuse in the prostitution industry, do you still stand by those remarks?

On page 2, you write that health cannot be realized without dignity. Do you believe your own conduct reflects that principle?

As documented in UN Watch’s latest report, you have repeatedly used profane and abusive language against those with whom you disagree.

On July 1st, 2024, you called former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “filthy.” In a tweet about him on December 8th, 2023, you wrote “f’ed up.” Is this dignified behavior?

On pages 1 and 3, your report opposes stigma and racism. Yet, when I criticized your conduct, you called me “evil scum white man.”

As a result, South Africa’s health authority found you guilty of bringing the medical profession into disrepute. Do you now regret those remarks?

Special Rapporteur, you were elected chair of the UN Human Rights Experts. Is your conduct setting the right example?

Finally, South Africa gave the world Nelson Mandela, who taught that human dignity belongs to every person, including one’s political opponents.

Special Rapporteur, do you believe that Nelson Mandela would have approved of your conduct? I thank you.”

Special Rapporteur Tlaleng Mofokeng: “And in the face of fierce, personal, targeted attacks, incitement of violence against me, escalating into domestic spaces as professional harassment and intimidation, both in real life and in online spaces… I stand here today with very few answers to the grand scale of human suffering.”

The post Hillel Neuer Confronts U.N. Official Who Called Him “Evil Scum” appeared first on UN Watch.

“Under Bachelet’s tenure, the office tasked with defending human rights became an office that protected the world’s worst abusers,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “The next secretary-general must be someone willing to confront dictators, not shield them.”

UN Watch sent a letter directly to Bachelet, as well as to various UN Security Council members, including the U.S., UK, France, Denmark, Latvia, Greece, Panama, and Liberia, presenting 11 questions about her record and urging governments to demand answers before extending any support to her candidacy.

The letters draw on UN Watch’s September 2022 report, “Blind Eye to Dictatorships,” which documented that during Bachelet’s tenure, the UN human rights office applied grossly disproportionate attention to criticizing liberal democracies while giving a free pass to authoritarian regimes that systematically suppress dissent.

Bachelet is one of five candidates vying to succeed Secretary-General António Guterres, whose term ends December 31. The others are Rafael Grossi of Argentina, Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, Macky Sall of Senegal, and María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador. The Security Council is expected to recommend a candidate in the coming months, with the General Assembly formally appointing the next secretary-general before year’s end.

Among the questions UN Watch is demanding Bachelet answer before the Security Council vote:

• On Russia: Why did she fail to initiate a single statement on Russian political prisoners, including dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, and remain publicly silent on the arrest and attempted poisoning of Alexei Navalny until after his Feb. 2021 sentencing?
• On China: Why did she fail to initiate a single statement on the detention of more than one million Uyghurs in China until the final hour of her mandate, despite repeated appeals from UN Watch and widespread international concern?
• On Iran: Why did she fail to initiate a single statement on Iran’s forced hijab laws and systemic discrimination against women?
• On Venezuela: Why did she initiate more stand-alone criticisms of the United States than of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, despite extensive evidence of arbitrary detention, torture and repression in Venezuela documented by her own UN human rights office?
• On North Korea: Why did she initiate only one stand-alone criticism of North Korea, treating one of the world’s most severe human rights violators similarly to how she treated democratic Australia, Spain and the European Union?
• On Antisemitism: Why did she fail to initiate a single stand-alone statement following major antisemitic attacks, including the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway and the hostage-taking at the synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, even as she publicly spoke out on other forms of racist violence?

“This system was created to defend victims of abuse,” Neuer said. “Before any government can consider supporting her candidacy, the world deserves clear answers.”

Pursuant to UN General Assembly resolution 79/327, the secretary-general must embody “the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity,” and the UN chief is expected to serve as “a spokesperson for the interests of the world’s peoples, in particular the poor and vulnerable among them.”

“A secretary-general must be willing to confront dictators when it matters most, not look away when the perpetrators are powerful,” Neuer said. “The United Nations cannot restore its credibility by elevating officials who repeatedly failed to speak out against major abuses in China, Iran, Russia and elsewhere. Before any government supports Bachelet’s candidacy, the world deserves clear answers about her record.”

ABOUT UN WATCH:
UN Watch is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization dedicated to holding the United Nations accountable to its founding principles of human rights, equality, and justice. Founded in 1993, UN Watch monitors UN institutions, exposes bias and misconduct, and advocates for reforms that strengthen the UN’s credibility and effectiveness. Through research, advocacy, and engagement at the UN, UN Watch works to ensure that universal human rights are upheld for all.

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On March 31st, at the end of the 61st Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the 47-member world body is set to appoint Zeina Jallad as the next Special Rapporteur on “the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures” — an Orwellian position initiated by Iran and Cuba — that is dedicated to condemning Western sanctions against oppressive regimes.

According to her application form, Jallad heads the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut, and has a long history of anti-Israel activism. She defended Hamas after the October 7th massacre.

Although the 5-nation vetting committee had recommended another name as its top choice, in a rare move, the Indonesian President of the Human Rights Council, Amb. Sidharto Suryodipuro, instead went to the second-ranked candidate, and proposed Jallad for the position. To justify his decision, the council president cited her “practice-grounded perspective… as well as her pledge to approach the role with independence, transparency and a commitment to listen.”

Historically, the President’s list of proposed appointees is almost always approved by a consensus of the 47-nation council. Nonetheless, member states do have the ability to raise objections and force a vote on Jallad’s appointment.

Zeina Jallad in Her Own Words

• In March 2025, Jallad defended Hamas: “Hamas is a political party. Hamas and its Charter recognized Israel… They won the elections in 2007, so they were the elected government. What did the world do? The Americans decided to sanction the Palestinian government. The Europeans decided to boycott Hamas. The entire world bashed Hamas. And then Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza. So before talking about October 7th, let’s talk about October 6th.”

• In a May 2024 article about Jordanians supporting Hamas through chants that “They said Hamas were terrorists. All of Jordan is Hamas!”, Jallad said that the chants were about the “resistance movement.” She added, “if you’re under occupation, fighting is resistance.”

• In November 2025, Jallad wrote in reference to Palestinians that “resisting oppression must be recognized not as a crime, but as a fundamental legal right and moral imperative.”

• In April 2025, Jallad stated that “suspending Israel’s involvement in international organizations should be viewed as a means to uphold justice.“

• In March 2025, Jallad stated that “The creation of Israel was the product of the wrongdoings of the West.“ She then added that “Israel is not faced with any existential threat.“

• In May 2021, as thousands of Hamas rockets were being launched at Israeli civilians, Jallad photographed a demonstration in Ramallah while adding: “To resist is to exist.”

• In 2023, Jallad criticized Israel’s purported “settler-colonial approach to state-building” and accused the Jewish state of being “a proto-apartheid regime.”

Palestinian Picked Over UN’s Own Recommended Expert

Putting aside the Orwellian nature of the UNHRC’s mandate on “unilateral coercive measures,” it’s far from clear that Jallad is the world’s leading expert on sanctions. Indeed, in this same session, Jallad also applied for an entirely different position — as the expert on housing.

The first ranked candidate, Clara Portela, wrote her doctoral thesis on “the imposition of sanctions in response to human rights violations.” She participated in the U.N. High Level Panel on Targeted Sanctions, and served as an advisor on sanctions violations to the European Economic and Social Committee. True, the post is nothing but an anti-Western political cudgel, but clearly the “qualified” expert for it was Portela, who indeed was ranked first by the five-nation Consultative Group.

Yet Jallad seems to have been chosen above the first-ranked candidate for two reasons. First, political reasons: she’s Palestinian, and this is considered a gesture to the Palestinian Lobby at the UN, which includes the PLO, the Arab and Islamic States, and many other stakeholders.

Second, she’s the ultimate insider, and the UN human rights office likes to select people who will be loyal to the system. Jallad currently serves as the legal advisor to Michael Fakhri, the UNHRC’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide and argued that the U.N.’s institutional legitimacy cannot be restored unless Israel’s statehood is undone. Jallad also served as a legal expert at UN Women, and as a “gender expert” for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Additionally, she worked as a legal expert for the UNHRC’s investigative body for Syria, where she actually specialized in blaming the West for sanctions on the Assad regime.

About the Mandate

The position of Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs), the UN’s term for Western sanctions on dictatorships, was established by an Iran-sponsored resolution in 2014, with the support of Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba. Its primary objective is to invert reality: claiming that Western sanctions, not repressive governments, are to blame for humanitarian crises in targeted countries.

The outgoing mandate-holder, Alena Douhan, has made official visits to China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe to later issue reports siding with the oppressive regimes of these nations instead of their victims. Douhan’s office has received more earmarked funding by state donors than any other UN rapporteur, with donations totaling over $1 million coming exclusively from China, Russia and Qatar.

.@YvetteCooperMP Is it true your 🇬🇧 government is planning to quietly go along with the UNHRC's appointment on Tuesday of this open defender of Hamas terror? We urge you to demand a vote, and to vote No.

ZEINA JALLAD: “Hamas is a political party. The biggest image: ‘Let's create… https://t.co/etLROc0NWd pic.twitter.com/1QjGuUYgwn

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 29, 2026

Meet the U.N.’s new human-rights authority. Zeina Jallad will probe sanctions against the world’s rogue states. They’ll be happy.https://t.co/uw6WgjQaTw

— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) March 26, 2026

This is exactly why the U.S. withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. @UN_HRC is poised to hand a watchdog role to a woman who excused Hamas, shielded Assad, and believes Israel should be removed from International Organizations. Disgusting behavior. https://t.co/RtGi8kFO6A

— Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman (@SenateForeign) March 26, 2026

La nuova relatrice speciale sulle sanzioni ai regimi è grande amica dei regimi. Zeina Jallad e il suo curriculum di posizioni inequivocabili. Di @GiulioMeottihttps://t.co/2OUO5yf7Jv

— Il Foglio (@ilfoglio_it) March 28, 2026

The UN Human Rights Council is set to appoint an academic who has appeared to defend Hamas to a special rapporteur position, against the recommendation of its own vetting group, according to the nonprofit group UN Watch.

Read more on The Times of Israel.https://t.co/iJLLHp90V5 pic.twitter.com/Z218VQ6V6z

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) March 28, 2026

The post U.N. Set to Appoint Terror Sympathizer as “Human Rights Expert” appeared first on UN Watch.

By Dina Rovner, Legal Advisor at UN Watch

The report released today by Francesca Albanese frames Israel’s alleged torture of Palestinians as “a structural feature of the ongoing Israeli genocide and broader settler-colonial apartheid” (para. 1). Throughout, she employs expansive and imprecise language to broaden the definition of torture, alleging “collective torture” (paras. 70, 86), a “torturous environment” (paras. 6, 15), and abuse occurring “across time and space” (para. 8).

Despite offering no new evidence of genocidal intent—an essential element of the crime—Albanese asserts that such intent is “apparent” when “torture is perpetrated across an entire territory… and sustained through policies that destroy the conditions of life” (para. 82), relying on previously debunked statements by Israeli officials. The report omits the context of an ongoing armed conflict with Hamas, sustained jihadist terrorism against Israeli civilians, and Israel’s efforts to mitigate harm—all of which contradict its central claims of intentional torture and genocide.

The result is a complete inversion: Hamas’s openly declared genocidal intent and mass atrocities are recast as crimes committed by Israel. While the Hamas Charter is openly genocidal against Israel, Albanese attributes such intent to Israel. Hamas acted on this intent in its October 7 attack targeting Israeli civilians. Moreover, the very crimes the report imputes to Israel—“mass killings, mass displacement, mass destruction of homes and infrastructure, mass starvation, [and] mass deprivation… of essential medical care”—were carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7 and against hostages in Gaza thereafter.

Below are specific critiques of the report.

1. Expanding Definition of Torture into a “Torturous Environment” Across an Entire Territory

Albanese’s report relies on a non-mainstream legal theory that radically expands the definition of torture beyond existing international law. 

Under Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture, torture is a narrowly defined crime requiring: (1) an intentional act; (2) the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering; (3) for a specific prohibited purpose such as punishment, coercion, intimidation, or discrimination; and (4) involvement of a public official. The Rome Statute similarly defines torture as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a person in custody or under the control of the accused—a definition grounded in identifiable victims and specific conduct.

Albanese abandons this framework. She accuses Israel of creating a “torturous environment” (paras. 6; 47; 71; 85) affecting an entire population across an entire territory. The only authority cited for this sweeping claim is a prior UN report (para. 15) that used the concept in a fundamentally different context—describing cumulative methods of torture inflicted upon a specific individual. Albanese extends that concept beyond “classic situations of detention” to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a whole, without citing any legal authority supporting such an expansion.

The consequences of this move are significant. The acts she labels as collective “torture”—including starvation as a method of war or genocide—are already separately defined crimes under international law. Rebranding them as “torture” adds nothing legally and instead collapses distinct legal categories. If every war crime or crime against humanity can also be relabeled as torture, the specific legal elements of torture are rendered meaningless.

Torture requires the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering for a prohibited purpose. By redefining the general hardships of armed conflict as “torture,” Albanese collapses this requirement. Armed conflict inevitably causes suffering, but military operations are undertaken to achieve military objectives—not to inflict pain as an end in itself. Erasing that distinction transforms torture from a defined criminal offense into a catch-all label for the consequences of war.

Albanese’s expansion does not stop at territory. She accuses Israel of torturing Palestinians “across time and space” (paras. 8, 13) and describes “collective torture against Palestinians as a group” (para. 70). She goes further, asserting that “genocide has become the ultimate form of torture,” characterizing it as “continuous, generational and collective” (para. 86). 

Effectively, she transforms a precise criminal definition into a metaphor for political grievance. By recasting torture as a diffuse “environment” operating across “time and space,” the report substitutes legal analysis with moral narrative.

2. Omission of Hamas Torture of Israeli Hostages

This report by the Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” omits any discussion of Hamas torture and abuse of Israeli hostages held in those territories. Returned hostages have testified to being confined in cramped underground tunnels without natural light or fresh air, subjected to unsanitary conditions, deprived of food and hygiene, chained, denied medical treatment, beaten, sexually assaulted, and subjected to psychological abuse.

A report devoted to torture that fails to address the captivity, abuse, and documented mistreatment of Israeli hostages demonstrates selective scrutiny. Such an omission does not reflect a principled application of international law, but an advocacy-driven approach.

3. Characterization of Israel as a Racist “Settler-Colonial-Apartheid” Regime

Albanese frames the conflict as a settler-colonial and racial conflict. She describes torture as “a structural feature of the ongoing Israeli genocide and broader settler-colonial apartheid” (para. 1), accuses Israel of “settler-colonial genocide” (Paras. 7; 82), and characterizes it as a “colonial and racially ordered regime” (para. 19). This framing denies the indigeneity of the Jewish people, who have maintained a continuous presence in the land of Israel for millennia and for whom the land is central to their religion, history, and collective identity. Instead, it casts Jews as colonial outsiders in their historic homeland.

By presenting Israel as a foreign colonial implant devoid of legitimate national or historical claims, the report effectively denies Jewish collective self-determination and treats the existence of the Jewish state as inherently unlawful.

4. Erasure of Hamas Terrorism and Armed Conflict Context

The report completely ignores the existence of an ongoing armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, as well as sustained jihadist terrorism against Israeli civilians by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups. By erasing the reality of armed conflict, the report portrays the ordinary and foreseeable consequences of warfare—civilian displacement, destruction of infrastructure, and civilian casualties—as evidence of genocidal intent.

The report likewise omits Hamas’s war crimes and violations of the laws of armed conflict, including its systematic use of human shields, its extensive network of subterranean terror tunnels embedded under civilian areas throughout Gaza, and hoarding of and profiteering from humanitarian aid. As a result, it attributes civilian harm solely to Israel, effectively absolving Hamas of responsibility for its own war crimes.

This omission is reflected throughout Albanese’s treatment of Israeli military operations. She levels a series of one-sided accusations against Israel while withholding critical context and ignoring Hamas’s role in increasing harm to Palestinian civilians. For example, she accuses Israel of “cartographic terror” in Gaza (para. 52), referring to evacuation warnings advising civilians to leave active battle zones, yet ignores Hamas’s militarization of civilian areas that makes such evacuations necessary to reduce civilian harm. She criticizes Israeli strikes in designated humanitarian zones while disregarding Hamas militant activity in those same areas (para. 52).

She blames Israel for having “obliterated” the homes of “over a million” Palestinians, as families’ “heirlooms and intimate connections with their past are lost” (para. 53). Yet she again ignores Hamas’s systematic militarization of residential areas, including the construction of a vast terror-tunnel infrastructure beneath homes, tunnel entrances inside residences, military operations conducted from civilian dwellings, and the booby-trapping of houses to maximize casualties among Israeli troops. She similarly blames Israel for damage to “schools, mosques, libraries, museums and cultural sites” (para. 54), while ignoring Hamas’s use of such sites for military purposes.

Likewise, she accuses Israel of “medicide” (para. 56), while disregarding evidence that Hamas has operated from hospitals and used ambulances for cover. At the same time, she fails to acknowledge humanitarian measures facilitated by Israel to alleviate pressure on Gaza’s health sector, including field hospitals, medical evacuations, and polio vaccination efforts.

This deliberate and one-sided treatment of the evidence violates the evidentiary standards governing Special Procedures and renders the report fundamentally unreliable.

More troubling still, the systematic erasure of Hamas crimes and the realities of armed conflict—combined with the ideological framing of Israel as a “settler-colonial regime”—provides the pretext for Albanese to level accusations of the gravest international crimes while bypassing core legal requirements such as intent, proportionality, and military necessity. In doing so, the report misrepresents both the factual record and the governing law, in violation of the duty of objectivity and integrity required of a UN mandate-holder.

5. Dismissal of Israeli “Security” as Illegitimate

Albanese places the terms “security” and “security threats” in quotation marks (paras. 3; 23), signaling her dismissal of Israel’s legitimate security concerns while recasting its counterterrorism measures as racially motivated “torture” and “genocide.” Her reporting repeatedly denies Israel’s right to self-defense under international law. Yet the Hamas Charter calls for Israel’s elimination, its officials openly affirm that objective, and have vowed to repeat the October 7 attacks again and again. Like any state, Israel has the right under international law to defend its territory and citizens from armed attacks, including those carried out by Hamas. By rejecting Israel’s right to security and self-defense in order to justify accusations of torture and genocide, Albanese abandons the requirements of objectivity and independence and uses her mandate as a vehicle for political advocacy rather than impartial human rights reporting.

6. Dishonest Misquotations and Fabrication of Intent

As Albanese acknowledges, intent is a necessary element of torture. To support her claim that Israel’s conduct following October 7, 2023 demonstrates an intent to subject Palestinians to torture—rather than an intent to defeat Hamas—she takes President Herzog’s words out of context as purported evidence of Israel’s “destructive intent” and “collective vengeance” (para. 3). Albanese misrepresents Herzog as claiming that there are no “innocents” in Gaza, when in fact he said the exact opposite, explaining how carefully the IDF seeks to reduce harm to civilians and to separate Hamas from the civilian population through warnings, evacuations, and monitoring. When asked about the exact phrase Albanese quotes—that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”—Herzog made clear that he did not mean that Gaza’s civilians were legitimate military targets: “No, I didn’t say that, I did not say that, I want to make it clear.” He repeatedly emphasized, both in that press conference and elsewhere, that Israel was targeting Hamas and making every effort to distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters and to avoid civilian harm. Albanese’s decision to isolate a single line while ignoring the clear surrounding context amounts, in the words of international law expert Salo Aizenberg, to “knowingly misquoting a head of state” and constitutes “intellectual fraud.”

Albanese similarly misrepresents Netanyahu’s October 7, 2023 statement that Israel would turn areas where Hamas had entrenched itself into rubble, portraying it instead as an expression of Israel’s long-term military objective to reduce all of Gaza to “cities of ruins” (para. 53). The statement makes clear Netanyahu was referring to Hamas, not to Gaza as a whole.

Albanese also cites, without attribution, a statement by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referring to Hamas as “human animals” (para. 51). She presents the remark as a “depiction of the entire population of Gaza as a group,” even though it plainly refers to Hamas and has been publicly clarified as such by Gallant himself. Fabricating intent through selective and distorted quotations is not merely intellectual dishonesty. It is a knowing abuse of her UN mandate that promotes unfounded and demonizing accusations against Israel.

7. False Claims of “Societal Torture” Through Starvation

Albanese’s report repeatedly accuses Israel of creating a “torturous environment” through intentional “starvation” (para. 47; 71). She claims that starvation constitutes “societal torture” and that it devastates “a people’s present and future” (para. 59). Yet the report omits facts that contradict this narrative, including Israel’s facilitation of over 2 million tons of aid into Gaza during the two years of war, more than 80% of which consisted of food and water, as well as documented Hamas theft of and profiteering from humanitarian aid. The report also ignores the extremely low number of malnutrition deaths—most involving individuals with pre-existing medical conditions—far below levels that would be expected in a famine. The only individuals intentionally starved in Gaza during the war were the Israeli hostages held by Hamas—a fact omitted entirely from Albanese’s report.

8. Discussion of Child Detention Omits Armed Group Use of Minors

Albanese’s report criticizes the large number of children detained by Israeli authorities since October 7, 2023 (paras. 24-25). Yet, she omits Hamas and other armed groups’ widespread use of minors in hostilities, including documented cases of teenagers used as fighters and in combat-support roles—an omission that fundamentally distorts the context in which minors may be detained. The recruitment and use of children in hostilities by armed groups is itself a serious violation of international law, including the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict to which the State of Palestine is a party.

9. False Claims of MSF “Expulsion” from Gaza

Albanese’s report cites what it describes as the “expulsion” of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in February 2026 as evidence of Israeli “medicide” in Gaza (para. 56). In fact, Israel required humanitarian organizations to provide staff lists for vetting, citing security and transparency concerns after evidence emerged that Hamas had infiltrated humanitarian organizations in Gaza. MSF was not expelled. It chose not to comply with this requirement. Notably, on February 11, 2026, after announcing that it would not provide the names, MSF acknowledged that it had to suspend all non-essential services at Nasser Hospital due to Hamas activity there.

10. Reliance on Unidentified, One-Sided Sources

The report relies heavily on non-transparent and unverified sources, including unidentified submissions, unnamed witnesses, politicized NGO materials, and testimonies collected by third-party organizations, while largely disregarding contrary evidence (para. 2). Rather than independently testing allegations, it frequently reinforces its conclusions by citing prior reports by UN experts (footnotes 188; 240), Commission of Inquiry findings (footnotes 92; 169), or the Special Rapporteur’s own earlier reports (footnotes 136; 155; 238; 192; 247)—materials that themselves relied on similarly aligned sources. This produces not corroboration, but a closed evidentiary circuit in which allegations are recycled, amplified, and presented as established fact.

The Code of Conduct and Manual of Operations for Special Procedures require mandate-holders to be guided by discretion, transparency, impartiality, and even-handedness, and to rely on objective and dependable facts drawn from credible sources that have been duly cross-checked. By contrast, the approach here privileges aligned advocacy material over independent verification. It is incompatible with the standards of objectivity and due diligence required of UN Special Procedures.

11. Maximalist Remedies Against Israel

The report calls for maximalist remedies aimed at isolating Israel internationally, including criminal proceedings against Israelis worldwide under universal jurisdiction statutes, expanded mechanisms for collecting evidence of alleged Israeli crimes, and a full commercial boycott (para. 92).  demands that Israel pay reparations to Palestinians (para. 89), effectively absolving them of responsibility for their own acts of terror and aggression. Albanese also calls on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to “immediately request arrest warrants” for “Israeli officials in particular Ben-Gvir, Katz and Smotrich”—accusing them of “perpetrating and/or ordering atrocity crimes”—as well as the IDF Chief of General Staff and senior Israeli Prison Service officials  (para. 93). The breadth of these measures underscores the report’s punitive orientation and demonstrates that it functions as lawfare advocacy rather than an impartial expert assessment.

The post Legal Analysis of Francesca Albanese’s March 2026 Report to the Human Rights Council appeared first on UN Watch.

Mayor of Modena: “I had reservations about receiving Ms. Albanese. She failed to uphold the principle that a person who holds an institutional role must do so without embracing fanaticism, but must at least act with sobriety which Ms. Albanese did not uphold. She failed in her… https://t.co/wV9eyM835N pic.twitter.com/AJWXWhNVS4

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) March 9, 2026

The mayor of Modena says his meeting with Francesca Albanese was a mistake he wouldn’t repeat, adding that she fails to uphold “the institutional role of sobriety” and “the principle of not embracing fanaticism.”

Albanese fired back on social media, saying she will return the symbolic replica of a medieval Modena coin that she received during her visit to Modena’s City Hall.

Mayor Massimo Mezzetti revealed he had doubts from the start about meeting the controversial UN rapporteur last September, when she was presented with the souvenir at Modena’s City Hall.

“To be honest, I had doubts about receiving her from the very beginning,” Mezzetti recalled, also revealing that “there was strong public pressure and the aforementioned parliamentarians showed up at my office, even though they weren’t invited,” Mezzetti said in the city council chamber.

“The climate was that way, and the request was to grant Albanese ordinary citizenship” of Modena, but “I limited myself to a closed-door meeting. I admit frankly that a week later, after the events in Reggio Emilia” — when Albanese rebuked that city’s mayor for having called for Hamas to release hostages — “I wouldn’t have done even that.”

“Albanese failed to uphold the institutional role of sobriety to which she was called, and to the principle of not embracing fanaticism. That phase is certainly behind us today, and if it were to arise again, it would be handled differently.”

Albanese Responds: “The Time Has Come to Return the Coin”

“The time has come to return the city coin the mayor gave me: a memento that will serve him more than me.” This is how Francesca Albanese responded on social media to Modena Mayor Massimo Mezzetti’s regret regarding the September meeting at City Hall.

Albanese’s supporters are outraged:

More than five months after that meeting—which, moreover, was held privately and without any formal act of institutional recognition—the mayor deemed it appropriate to publicly declare that he would not make that decision again. This statement appears all the more incomprehensible and unfounded. It is worth remembering that the City of Modena did not grant honorary citizenship or any other honor to the UN Rapporteur. It was simply an institutional meeting, behind closed doors, with a figure who holds a high-profile international role within the United Nations. A gesture of normal institutional dialogue that, in a democratic and pluralistic city, should not be denied to anyone—let alone a UN representative engaged in monitoring human rights. Therefore, it is surprising that the mayor now feels the need to reopen an issue now archived in the local public debate, declaring that, with hindsight, he would not even have granted that meeting. A distancing statement made “out of the blue,” without any supervening circumstances to justify it. We wonder then if the mayor would have the courage to say these same words while looking Francesca Albanese in the eye.

The post Modena Mayor Regrets Meeting With UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese appeared first on UN Watch.

Geneva, March 4, 2026 — UN Watch, the Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations, today condemned UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for knowingly promoting a fake AI-generated image of “165 coffins of schoolgirls” in order to generate support for the Islamic regime of Iran — and for refusing to take it down her tweet even after the image was “Community Noted” as disinformation.  

The image, which Albanese shared on X (formerly Twitter), was flagged as 97% AI-generated and lacks any verifiable evidence, violating the UN Code of Conduct’s requirement for mandate-holders to rely only on objective and reliable facts, to cross-check information, and to use credible sources. Despite the image being exposed as fabricated by a Community Note on X.com, and by UN Watch, Albanese doubled down, stating, “the picture is not the issue.” She has refused to take down her post, which quote-tweeted the fake image.

Iran’s regime is illiberal and brutal, and the Iranian people deserve the freedom they have long fought for. This gives no right to the US or Israel -whose own policies in Palestine are also illiberal and brutal- to bomb Iran, nor to EU leaders to cloak escalation in hypocrisy. https://t.co/GM1SrxhCPa

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 3, 2026

UN Watch urges UN Secretary-General António Guterres to take decisive action by condemning Albanese’s misconduct and calling for her removal.

“Secretary-General Guterres must act now to restore trust in the UN,” said Neuer. “Allowing rapporteurs to peddle regime propaganda — complete with fabricated AI images — without consequence turns the world body into a tool for dictators, not a defender of human rights. The Iranian people, who have fought bravely for freedom, deserve better than to have their suffering exploited in this way.”

This is not the first instance of Albanese spreading disinformation; in 2024, even the UN spokesperson rebuked her for amplifying fake news, emphasizing that “all officials who are associated with the U.N. must take special care not to pass along any disinformation.”

“Francesca Albanese’s actions represent a gross violation of her mandate,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch. “By amplifying fabricated propaganda designed to shield Iran’s regime from accountability, she undermines the credibility of the entire UN human rights system. This fake image was clearly intended to drum up outrage against the U.S. and Israel, while ignoring the regime’s own atrocities, including the recent massacre of tens of thousands of Iranian civilians.”

Due to Albanese’s bias and inflammatory rhetoric that breaches UN impartiality standards, Britain, France, Germany, the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Argentina, Italy, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic all issued unprecedented repudiations of Albanese’s conduct, with many now calling for her resignation.

Neuer added: “The unprecedented calls for Francesca Albanese’s resignation by numerous democracies underscores the depth of her misconduct and the growing consensus that her biased, inflammatory conduct has made her position untenable.”

Call on Belgian Universities to Reconsider Planned Award to Albanese

UN Watch calls on the rectors of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the University of Antwerp, and Ghent University to immediately reconsider their decision to award Albanese an honorary doctorate on April 2, 2026. These institutions must uphold academic integrity and reject honoring individuals who propagate falsehoods under the UN banner.

About UN Watch

United Nations Watch is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mission is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter. UN Watch holds the UN accountable to its founding principles by exposing hypocrisy, bias, and abuses. For more information, visit www.unwatch.org.

The post UN Watch Condemns UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for Spreading Fake AI Image to Defend Iranian Regime appeared first on UN Watch.

Following is a legal analysis of the 2026 report by Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, to the UN Human Rights Council.

By Dina Rovner, Legal Advisor at UN Watch

Introduction

Michael Fakhri’s report to the 61st Session of the UN Human Rights Council, Land and the Right to Food, is not a neutral or balanced assessment of land governance. It is an ideological critique of market economies and Western legal systems, premised on the view that private property and international trade are inherently destructive. Throughout the report, Fakhri privileges collective and customary tenure systems as morally and legally superior, while casting individual property rights as narrow and harmful.

From the outset, the report frames land commodification as “one of the most destructive global practices” and a “major cause of hunger and starvation” (Summary). It accuses “corporations and rich people” of destroying “land’s life-giving force” and links market concentration—namely, the consolidation of land ownership and control—to “systemic hunger, poverty and violence” (para. 1; 6). International trade law, investment treaties, and global finance are portrayed not as complex legal frameworks subject to debate and reform, but as structurally unjust systems designed to dispossess (para. 8). Individual “property rights” are repeatedly characterized as part of the problem, while “customary” and “collective” land rights are presented as the normative alternative (para. 45-59; 84-90).

The ideological framing is reinforced by the report’s opening citation to Mahmoud Darwish’s poem On This Land (para. 1). Rather than grounding the analysis in international legal doctrine or empirical evidence, Fakhri begins with Palestinian nationalist poetic imagery about belonging to the land. Darwish is not cited merely as an illustrative quotation. He is invoked as a moral authority. A central figure in Palestinian nationalist literature, Darwish is widely regarded as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and his poetry fuses themes of exile, land, dispossession, resistance, and identity. On This Land advances a one-sided conception of belonging to the land of “Palestine,” omitting Jewish historical ties, and is frequently cited to legitimize resistance narratives. This choice signals that the report is structured less as legal analysis and more as moral advocacy. Later, Fakhri again invokes Darwish’s poetry to describe how he has “witnessed people’s relationship with their land and territory as divine” (para. 28). This kind of spiritual framing cannot replace legal reasoning in a UN mandate report.

This framing culminates in the conclusion, where Fakhri describes himself as being “from a mountain village in Lebanon” and shares a personal aphorism from his father about “learning how to share the sky” (para 79). In a report that repeatedly elevates indigenous land struggles and critiques Western legal systems, this self-description does more than provide background. It places the mandate-holder within a narrative of ancestral, land-based belonging. Yet while Fakhri’s family is Lebanese, he himself is a Canadian-born law professor at an American university, operating within the very Western legal and socio-economic systems the report portrays as structurally unjust. The contrast underscores how much of the report rests on moral narrative rather than objective legal analysis. 

The Special Rapporteur’s mandate concerns the right to food. Yet significant portions of the report move well beyond food security analysis into sweeping claims about settler colonialism, state legitimacy, and the foundational structure of the United Nations itself. This expansion beyond the thematic mandate calls into question its reliability as an impartial assessment.

Consistent with this political framing, the report disproportionately focuses on Israel, repeatedly referring to it as the “Israeli regime”—terminology that departs from standard UN country nomenclature—while other States, such as Russia, are identified by their formal UN names. Although numerous country situations are discussed in brief, over one quarter of the report is devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That conflict is recast as a paradigmatic settler-colonial struggle over land and natural resources. This characterization reduces a complex national and religious conflict to a one-sided colonial narrative, treating Palestinian rights as paramount while effectively denying Jewish historical presence and the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their historical homeland. Meanwhile, other severe and ongoing land-related crises—including in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and elsewhere—are ignored. Nor does the report meaningfully address Russia’s war in Ukraine and its profound impact on global food security.

Indeed, Fakhri dedicates the entire “Justice and Occupation” section to Israel, explicitly justifying this choice by asserting that the Israeli presence in the “occupied Palestinian territory” is not a temporary occupation but a “settler-colonial project” that represents the “global exemplar for the struggle against the global rush to grab land” (para. 65). By elevating the only Jewish state as the archetype of global dispossession, while disregarding other protracted territorial disputes and occupations involving control over land, water, and natural resources—including Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, Kashmir, Tibet, and Xinjiang—the report reveals a politicized selectivity that further casts doubt on its authority as an independent assessment.

Methodological and Substantive Flaws in the Report’s Analysis of Israel

1. Selective and unbalanced sourcing

Fakhri’s report falls short of the evidentiary standards expected of a UN mandate-holder. While he includes citations, the sections addressing Israel rely heavily on advocacy submissions and UN materials that reflect similar conclusions, rather than a balanced range of independently verifiable sources. For example, in the discussion of buffer zones, the report cites prominently to a submission by BADIL, a Palestinian advocacy organization whose mission centers on advancing the “right of return” and which actively promotes BDS. The report does not meaningfully engage contrary evidence, Israeli governmental positions, or independent legal analysis.

In addition, the report frequently cites prior UN materials—including Fakhri’s own previous report to the General Assembly—reinforcing a circular pattern of sourcing rather than independent verification. Even where Israeli military orders and court cases are referenced by number, the report does not substantively analyze the underlying legal texts or judicial reasoning, instead offering conclusory characterizations of those measures.

Most notably, the discussion in the “Justice and Occupation” section relies in significant part on the testimony of a single unidentified Palestinian witness, without corroboration or opportunity for response. Even if properly corroborated, a single anecdotal account is not a substitute for systematic legal analysis and independently verifiable evidence in a UN mandate report.

2. Omission of terrorism and armed conflict context

Fakhri portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict primarily as a struggle over land rights and natural resources, while omitting the central role of terrorism and armed conflict in shaping Israeli policy. The words “Hamas” and “terrorism” do not appear in the report. Nowhere does the analysis grapple with the reality that Israel’s buffer zones, access restrictions, and security measures arise in the context of sustained attacks by Hamas, a terrorist organization designated as such by the United States, the European Union, and others, and one that openly calls for Israel’s destruction.

For example, in discussing Israeli buffer zones in Gaza, Fakhri notes that Israel prohibits plants over 80 cm in certain areas, “supposedly” to prevent their use as natural hideouts (para. 15). The use of “supposedly” dismisses the security rationale without engaging with the documented use of vegetation, agricultural land, and civilian infrastructure for militant purposes. Likewise, in criticizing restrictions on maritime access (para. 16), the report fails to mention Hamas’s use of maritime routes for weapons smuggling and the October 7, 2023 maritime infiltration.

Fakhri accuses Israel of “systemic” and “deliberate” destruction of land and the environment in Gaza, yet does not acknowledge the 500 kilometers of subterranean terror tunnels constructed by Hamas under all of Gaza. Even the reference to the “so-called ceasefire” omits repeated violations by Hamas. By excluding the role of an armed terrorist actor entirely, the report presents Israeli security measures as gratuitous land dispossession rather than policies adopted in the context of ongoing hostilities.

Consistent with this pattern of omission, the report alleges that Israel is conducting a “starvation campaign,” presenting this accusation as an established fact while disregarding substantial evidence of Israeli measures to facilitate humanitarian assistance and food entry. At the same time, it fails to acknowledge the Israeli hostages abducted on October 7, 2023, many of whom have testified to prolonged and severe food deprivation while in Hamas captivity. This asymmetrical treatment of starvation in the same conflict reinforces the report’s one-sided framing and further undermines its credibility as an impartial mandate-holder assessment.

3. Denial of Jewish national rights

Fakhri’s report does not merely criticize Israeli policies. It rejects the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the territory. In paragraph 68, he refers to sovereign Israeli territory as “lands occupied in 1948,” treating the very establishment of Israel as an act of occupation.

Elsewhere, he refers to the “territory of Palestine” as a single territorial unit governed since 1948 by “Israel” and “the State of Palestine” (para. 59). This formulation is historically and legally inaccurate. No Palestinian state existed in 1948, nor did a sovereign Palestinian government exercise authority over the territory in the decades that followed. Between 1948 and 1967, the West Bank was under Jordanian control and Gaza under Egyptian administration. Even today, Palestinian statehood remains contested under international law. To describe the “territory of Palestine” as having been governed since 1948 by both “Israel” and “the State of Palestine” is therefore not merely imprecise, but it misstates the historical record and effectively treats all of Israel as occupied Palestinian territory. 

The report further describes Israeli governance as a “settler-colonial project” and characterizes control over land and resources as “foreign colonial control” (para. 18; 65). This language depicts Jews as foreign colonizers rather than an indigenous people with millennia of historical, religious, and continuous presence in the land. The framing erases the indigenous dimension of Jewish claims and denies the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their historical homeland.

Moreover, in a clear overreach beyond the scope of his right-to-food mandate, Fakhri calls for the realization of a Palestinian “right of return” (para. 67), a position that, in effect, would negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Such a measure would entail the entry of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees into sovereign Israel, fundamentally transforming its demographic character. Framed as a legal entitlement, the proposal functions in practice as a mechanism for dismantling Jewish sovereignty rather than as part of a negotiated two-state solution.

4. Palestinian return as a condition for UN legitimacy

In paragraph 67, Fakhri moves beyond advocacy for Palestinian rights and advances a far more sweeping claim: that the credibility and survival of the United Nations itself depend on resolving the Palestinian question through realization of return and self-determination.

He writes that the “question of Palestine” is “as old as the United Nations itself,” tying Palestinian dispossession directly to the UN’s founding and its endorsement of partition. He then declares, as established fact, that Israel is committing “genocide” and waging a “starvation campaign.” He claims that a recent ceasefire merely “slowed down” these crimes.

Fakhri goes further still. He argues that the same international legal and political mechanisms required to secure the Palestinian people’s “right to return and self-determination” are necessary to “rebuild the United Nations that died in the last two years,” implicitly referring to the period since October 7, 2023. In effect, he presents the restoration of multilateral legitimacy as contingent upon implementation of Palestinian return.

This goes far beyond criticism of a Member State, arguing that the UN’s institutional legitimacy cannot be restored unless Israel’s statehood is undone.

5. Demonization of Israel

Fakhri accuses Israel of the gravest international crimes, including apartheid (para. 39), genocide (paras. 17, 66, 67), and starvation (para. 39, 65–67), and presents these allegations as established fact rather than as contested claims. These are among the most serious accusations in international law, yet the report offers no comparable treatment of other conflicts. The Sudan conflict, for example, is not addressed at all.

Fakhri devotes an entire section to Israel, describing it as having developed “every technique of dispossession, dislocation and occupation” against the Palestinians (para. 65). By casting Israel as the global exemplar of land dispossession, the report singles out one State—the world’s only Jewish state—as uniquely criminal. This selective use of the most severe legal labels reinforces the report’s broader pattern of treating Israel not as one conflict among many, but as the central moral offender in the international system.

6. Antisemitism and double standards

By casting Israel as the archetype of global land dispossession and applying the gravest criminal labels exclusively to the world’s only Jewish state, while declining to apply comparable scrutiny to other conflicts, Fakhri employs a double standard. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism—adopted by 47 countries—identifies “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” as a contemporary example of antisemitism. The report’s selective legal framing aligns with that definition.

Moreover, by suggesting that the United Nations “died in the last two years” and linking its collapse to the Palestinian question, the report attributes systemic institutional failure to Israel’s existence and conduct. Framing the restoration of the international order as contingent upon undoing Jewish sovereignty places the Jewish state at the center of global institutional breakdown. Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate. Singling out the Jewish state as the central moral cause of international collapse is not. This is a modern articulation of classic antisemitic tropes.

7. Misrepresentation of Israeli Supreme Court jurisprudence

Fakhri asserts that the Israeli Supreme Court “legitimized starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza,” citing not to the Court’s judgment itself but to an Opinio Juris article discussing the Court’s March 2025 decision regarding humanitarian assistance obligations (para. 65). The decision does not legitimize starvation as a weapon of war. To the contrary, the Court reviewed Israel’s obligations under both international and domestic law and assessed its compliance with those obligations. Fakhri’s characterization substitutes a polemical conclusion for the Court’s legal reasoning.

More broadly, the report selectively invokes Israeli Supreme Court rulings to suggest that the judiciary legitimizes Palestinian “dispossession” in the West Bank (para. 78), while omitting decisions that contradict this narrative. In June 2020, the Supreme Court struck down the Settlements Regularization Law, finding that it disproportionately violated the basic rights of Palestinian residents, including property, equality, and dignity. That same year, the Court ordered the removal of the Mitzpe Kramim outpost after determining that it had been built on private Palestinian land. In 2018, 15 settlement homes were evacuated pursuant to a Supreme Court ruling on similar grounds. The Court has also ordered modifications to the route of the West Bank security barrier, including in Beit Sourik Village Council v. Government of Israel (HCJ 2056/04), where it required the State to reroute sections of the barrier that caused disproportionate harm to Palestinian landowners.

These decisions demonstrate that the Israeli Supreme Court operates as an independent judicial body that has repeatedly constrained government action and protected Palestinian property rights. By ignoring this body of jurisprudence, the report presents a selective and distorted account of Israeli law and judicial oversight.

Conclusion

Taken together, these deficiencies—ideological framing, selective sourcing, omission of security context, denial of Jewish national rights, criminal accusations presented as fact, and misrepresentation of Israeli judicial decisions—undermine the credibility of the report as an impartial mandate-holder assessment. A Special Rapporteur is expected to apply consistent legal standards, engage competing evidence, and adhere to the scope of the mandate. This report does not.

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