How the US and Israel Are Silencing UN Experts

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On Saturday, 25, 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was improperly served legal documents after having delivered a speech at the Nelson Mandela Foundation annual lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she called for a boycott and arms embargo against Israel. A South African justice official, acting without ministerial authorization, facilitated service of a defamation lawsuit filed by Christian Zionist organizations in Colorado. Following this distasteful stunt, South Africa’s Justice Minister swiftly apologized for the procedural breach, which violated the Superior Court Act. The incident compounds mounting pressure on the Italian diplomat, who faces U.S. sanctions under Executive Order 14203, freezing her American assets and barring her entry since July.


A report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights indicates that independent UN human rights experts have been subjected to intolerable acts of intimidation, threats, and personal assaults while fulfilling their responsibilities to safeguard and advance human rights. The Coordination Committee of Special Procedures, which consists of six independent experts, released a statement in 2024 condemning verbal assaults, derogatory social media campaigns, and aggressive remarks from State officials and civil society. This comes at a crucial time when Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts, and Working Groups appointed by the UN Human Rights Council are at the forefront of addressing emerging crises and challenges, especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Palestine.

The authorization for service documentation was shared on X/Twitter by Mark Goldfeder, Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), which is thought to be involved in the legal actions. On September 8, the NJAC filed a complaint against Albanese in the District Court of Colorado (US) on behalf of two Christian Zionist organizations, specifically the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and Christians for Israel USA (C4i), which are reportedly suing the UN Special Rapporteur for defamation, trade libel, and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage.

Dear @FranceskAlbs and Minister @mmkubayi:
You claim that service was unauthorized?
Here is the authorization letter, signed, sealed, and delivered.
You both love to lie, but please remember that @NJACLaw always brings receipts.
Ball is in your court; we’ll see you in ours. pic.twitter.com/M54h8wHd4T

— Mark Goldfeder (@MarkGoldfeder) October 27, 2025

Unimpressed by this stunt, the Nelson Mandela Foundation issued a Press Statement, politely calling the incident regrettable.

DOCUMENT: Nelson Mandela Foundation Press Statement (Source: The Nelson Mandela Foundation)
Nelson Mandela Foundation Press Statement

When Speaking Truth Becomes a Crime: How the US and Israel Are Silencing UN Experts

When Francesca Albanese checked her phone in July, the message was clear: speak out about Gaza, and pay the price. The Italian lawyer and UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights had just been hit with US sanctions, a move so unprecedented that even seasoned diplomats struggled to recall anything comparable.

Her crime? Doing her job.

“Mafia-Style Intimidation”

Albanese didn’t mince words in her response. Reached by Al Jazeera, she dismissed the sanctions with characteristic bluntness: “No comment on mafia-style intimidation techniques”. Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide.

It was a defiant reply to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had accused her of waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare” against Washington and Tel Aviv. The real issue, according to Rubio, was Albanese’s push for the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

But for Albanese and her supporters, this was something else entirely: an attempt to muzzle one of the most prominent voices documenting what she calls Israel’s genocidal campaign in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OPT).

The Human Cost of Speaking Out

The sanctions aren’t just symbolic. Currently, Albanese can no longer travel to the United States. Her assets have been frozen, and the ripple effects touch her whole family, including her American daughter and her husband, who works for a US-based organization.

When asked about the personal impact, however, Albanese put it in perspective. Her problems, she noted, pale in comparison to what Palestinians are enduring under Israeli bombardment and blockade in Gaza.

Since taking up her mandate in May 2022, the academic and human rights lawyer has become a thorn in the side of both Washington and Jerusalem. She has called for arms embargoes, urged states to cut trade ties with Israel, and released meticulously detailed reports documenting violations of international law, including a recent one mapping corporate complicity in Palestinian displacement.

More Than One Target

Albanese isn’t alone in facing US retaliation. She is simply the latest name on a growing list.

In February, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan. By June, four ICC judges had been added to the blacklist. The message was unmistakable: Investigate Israel or American officials, and there will be consequences.

This broader campaign has coincided with Trump’s wholesale withdrawal from international institutions. Since returning to office in January, his administration has cut off engagement with the UN Human Rights Council, frozen funding for the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, and announced plans to exit the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization.

Critics see a pattern: an effort not just to defend Israel, but to dismantle the very frameworks of international accountability.

A Dangerous Precedent

The response from the international community has been swift and alarmed.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, called the sanctions “a dangerous precedent,” adding that “the use of unilateral sanctions against special rapporteurs or any other UN expert or official is unacceptable.”

Jürg Lauber, president of the UN Human Rights Council, urged member states to “refrain from any acts of intimidation or reprisal” against UN experts. Dylan Williams of the Center for International Policy went further, labeling the move “rogue state behavior.”

Amnesty International’s secretary-general Agnes Callamard, herself a former UN special rapporteur, warned that governments worldwide must do everything in their power to protect the independence of these experts.

What’s at Stake?

Special Rapporteurs occupy a unique place in the international system. They are independent experts and unpaid volunteers, essentially, who serve in their personal capacity to monitor human rights abuses around the world. They are not UN employees. They receive no salary. And they operate without the backing of powerful governments. The team which supports Special Rapporteurs is based  in Geneva, where the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights facilitate their engagement with States and other stakeholders and ensures that they can do their job as a Special Rapporteur

That independence is precisely what makes them valuable but also vulnerable.

By targeting Albanese, the US and Israel are sending a message to all such experts: challenge us, and you’ll face consequences that extend far beyond your professional life.

Yet Albanese shows no signs of backing down. Barred from entering the US, she delivered her latest report from South Africa in October, during the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, emphasizing that her work is about “defending people who are being genocided right now.”

The Bigger Picture

The campaign against Albanese isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a broader effort to shield Israel from accountability as allegations of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity pile up at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Neither the US nor Israel is party to the ICC’s Rome Statute, and both governments have argued that the court has no jurisdiction over their nationals. But as the ICC has pointed out, Palestine acceded to the statute in 2015, giving the court territorial jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian land, regardless of the perpetrator’s nationality.

That legal reality hasn’t stopped Washington and Tel Aviv from treating international law as optional.

A Test for the International Order

What’s playing out is more than a dispute over one UN expert or one conflict. It’s a test of whether the international system can hold powerful states accountable, or whether might still makes right.

More than ever, Albanese seems determined to find out. Despite the personal cost, despite the frozen assets and travel bans and attacks on her character, she continues her work. “I stand firmly and convincingly on the side of justice,” she wrote after the sanctions were announced, “as I have always done.”

In an era when speaking truth to power comes with an ever-steeper price tag, that may be the most important message of all…

Siyabonga Goni reports for Daily Maverick…