GENEVA (AN) — The president of the U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the Trump administration's attempt to silence an independent investigator probing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories.
Jürg Lauber, a Swiss diplomat and president of the 47-nation human rights body, expressed "regret" over the U.S. State Department’s decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza.
In response to the U.S. sanctions, which were announced during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week, Lauber called on all 193 U.N. member nations "to fully cooperate with the special rapporteurs and mandate holders of the council and to refrain from any acts of intimidation or reprisal against them."
Hamas militants won parliamentary elections in 2006 and seized control of the Gaza Strip a year later through violence against the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, was designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 1997, with similar findings by the European Union and other Western countries. The Palestinian Authority remains in charge of semi-autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The move to impose sanctions against Albanese marks the latest effort by the United States to silence critics of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, following an unsuccessful U.S. bid to remove the Italian legal scholar and human rights lawyer from her position.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights called it a "dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the international justice system," including The Hague-based International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal
"Such patently vindictive and repressive measures are as unlawful as they are reprehensible," said CCR, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization. "In a time of mass atrocity, this administration is setting fire to the infrastructure of international accountability for atrocities."
'Lawfare' proponent or council's 'essential instrument'
Albanese has described Israel's relentless military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says has killed over 55,000 Palestinians, as an act of "genocide" against the 2.1 million Palestinian civilians who live there.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in announcing the sanctions on Wednesday, said the U.S. "will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare." Such sanctions typically aim to prevent travel to the U.S. and to freeze any U.S.-affiliated assets.
Rubio justified the sanctions by asserting that Albanese "has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries. Neither the United States nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute, making this action a gross infringement on the sovereignty of both countries."
The U.S. has "repeatedly condemned and objected to the biased and malicious activities of Albanese," Rubio said, which have "recently escalated" with her letter-writing campaign against individuals and major American companies, and her recommendation that the International Criminal Court investigate and prosecute them.
"We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty," Rubio added.
However, Lauber countered that Albanese was appointed by the council, and its special rapporteurs — each mandated to investigate specific themes or areas — "are an essential instrument of the council in fulfilling its mandate to promote and protect all human rights worldwide."
As of Nov. 2024, the council had 46 thematic and 14 country mandates. Earlier this year, the Trump administration withdrew the U.S. from the council, having also done so during Trump's first term from Jan. 2017 to Jan. 2021.
