A new report from UN Watch – an independent NGO monitoring the work of the United Nations – has confirmed what many of us have long suspected. Namely, that UN human-rights experts are increasingly apologists for terrorists and authoritarians.
The report, From Watchdogs to Ideologues, profiles 13 of the UN’s so-called independent experts. It reveals a corrupt system that is enabling the world’s worst human-rights violators. It documents how these so-called experts – trading on the title of ‘special rapporteur’ – routinely serve the interests of Beijing, Tehran and Moscow, while treating the democratic West as the primary threat to human rights.
The report really needs to be read to be believed. Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, praised the Venezuelan dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro after visiting the country in 2025. Yet, at the same time, he accused Canada of committing a ‘genocide’ against its indigenous people.
To be fair, that’s the official Government Of Canada position.
Fakhri led the charge internationally to accuse Israel of pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation in Gaza, yet said nothing about Hamas’s visible starvation of returned Israeli hostages.
The case of Alena Douhan, the special rapporteur on ‘unilateral coercive measures’, isn’t much better. Douhan has taken a surprisingly lenient attitude to Russian sanctions, and as recently as 2024 was criticising them for having negative consequences on the ‘global south’. During her tenure, Douhan has accepted more than $250,000 from the Russian government and more than $900,000 from the Chinese government.




