The embattled witnesses

Francesca Albanese, an Italian jurist heading the UN mandate on Palestine, has ended up on the same blacklist as the US Treasury, which includes drug traffickers and terrorists. Never before has the United States sanctioned a UN official simply for doing their job: investigating the worst human rights violations. This is the paradoxical reality of the so-called UN special rapporteurs: tasked with telling the truth about global crises, they often end up under attack from the very people who should be listening to them. The common belief is that those who work for the UN have power and protection. Instead, many rapporteurs are subject to threats, sanctions, and sometimes forced to leave their country or endure defamation campaigns. The real twist is this: the better they do their job, the more vulnerable they become. Francesca Albanese is not the first. Richard Falk, her American predecessor, was arrested as soon as he landed in Israel in 2008, despite assurances from the UN. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, an expert on the rights of indigenous peoples and a member of the Kankanaey Igorot people, was accused of terrorism by the Philippine government in 2018 after reporting killings and abuses against indigenous communities. She had to leave the country to save herself. Today there are 46 thematic mandates and 13 on specific countries: the rapporteurs are not just jurists, but a mix of lawyers, activists, diplomats, and scholars, often with stories of personal or family struggles for human rights. The variety is enormous: from career diplomats such as René Felber and Makarim Wibisono, who wrote reports full of diplomacy, to scholars such as John Dugard and Michael Lynk, who brought the language of apartheid and occupation into UN reports on Israel and Palestine. The rapporteurs are paid little or nothing, often having to juggle their official work and the UN mandate. They find themselves managing a "hybrid" position: appointed by the UN but acting as independent experts, not as spokespersons for the institution. It is a gray area that requires skills in legal diplomacy, as Mikael Rask Madsen calls it: knowing how to deal with ambassadors, negotiating access to often hostile countries, changing tone depending on the interlocutor without ever losing independence. But sometimes this independence is precisely what exposes them. Take Alena Douhan, rapporteur on unilateral coercion: after a visit to Iran in 2022 – the first time a UN expert had set foot there since 2005 – she was criticized by local human rights defenders for ignoring civil society, effectively reinforcing the regime's narrative. It is therefore understandable why many rapporteurs rely on their personal networks and the support of other experts to maintain a minimum level of protection. This role has not always existed: until 1967, the UN could not even systematically investigate violations. It took decades and pressure from small countries and NGOs to create the figure of the independent expert and overcome the resistance of the great powers, who feared "embarrassing questions." Felix Ermacora, the first rapporteur on Afghanistan, said that in his time, experts had "relative freedom," while today they are often constrained by political ties. The advent of large NGOs such as Amnesty International and the innovation of figures such as Theo van Boven – who in 1982 established the mandate on extrajudicial killings, risking his job – have transformed a blocked system into a global surveillance mechanism. But today the rapporteur system seems like a fragile "crown jewel", as Kofi Annan called it: a precious resource that is always underfunded. Most experts work for free, while the need for independent investigations grows as conflicts increase and funding from member states declines. There is a detail that few know: before 2006, rapporteurs were appointed by the head of the Commission on Human Rights, often by recommendation or personal acquaintance. After the reform, anyone can apply, but the choice remains in the hands of a committee of ambassadors that often reflects the political balance between states. The position of the rapporteur is therefore the result of a history of clashes between independence and state control, between the universal defense of rights and national sovereignty. And the battle, as Albanese says, is by no means over. The bottom line is this: the better the UN rapporteurs do their job, the more they risk paying the price with their own skin. If this story has made you see human rights from a new perspective, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes: you don't approve, you declare that this question is also yours. And if you happen to tell someone that a UN official can end up on the same blacklist as terrorists just for doing their duty, on Lara Notes you can mark that conversation with Shared Offline: it's the way to say that talking about these things, together, really matters. This story comes from Aeon and has saved you 10 minutes.