UN rights council blasts US sanctioning of rapporteur for documenting Gaza genocide
Iran Press TV
Thursday, 10 July 2025 5:43 PM
The United Nations Human Rights Council has sharply criticized the United States for sanctioning a UN-appointed human rights expert who has been vocal in documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The council's president, Swiss Ambassador Jürg Lauber, said Thursday he "deeply regretted" the US move to impose punitive measures on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, calling the action a serious affront to international human rights mechanisms.
The condemnation came one day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Albanese for what he termed "illegitimate efforts" to prompt international prosecution of US and Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Rubio, a staunch supporter of the Israeli regime, accused Albanese of "malicious activities," alleging without evidence that she promotes antisemitism and "terrorism."
He also criticized her recent recommendation that arrest warrants be issued against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other high-level officials for their roles in what human rights experts increasingly describe as genocide in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian legal scholar and internationally respected human rights advocate, has consistently exposed Israel's systemic crimes against Palestinians.
Her most recent report detailed how various multinational corporations—many based in the United States—profit from what she called the Israeli regime's "economy of occupation, apartheid, and genocide."
The report named several companies implicated in fueling Israel's military-industrial complex and enabling human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The document triggered outrage from the Israeli regime and its Western backers, with Tel Aviv pushing aggressively for Albanese's removal from her UN mandate.
The sanctions against Albanese follow Washington's recent blacklisting of four ICC judges who were involved in issuing an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes.
Those judges were barred from entering the United States and had any US-based assets frozen—a move widely condemned by international legal experts as coercive and unlawful.
In his statement, Lauber reaffirmed the vital role of independent experts in exposing abuses and defending universal human rights, regardless of political pressure.
"Special Rapporteurs are indispensable to the Council's mission to uphold human rights worldwide," he said. "All UN member states are obligated to cooperate with them and refrain from any form of retaliation or intimidation."
Albanese, though independent from the UN bureaucracy, operates under a UN Human Rights Council mandate. She has faced repeated smears and threats from Israeli officials and lobby groups for her accurate, evidence-based reporting on the situation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Despite growing political backlash, human rights defenders continue to raise the alarm over the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.
Since October 2023, the Israeli regime has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians—most of them civilians, women, and children—amid widespread destruction and blockade-induced starvation.
Legal experts and rights groups stress that sanctioning investigators like Albanese sets a dangerous precedent and weakens international law at a time when accountability is urgently needed.
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