U.N. weaponized against the West: experts warn

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• What the UN Watch report uncovered about special rapporteurs and bias
• High-profile examples that fueled controversy
  • Michael Fakhri — food security and contested judgments
  • Alena Douhan — sanctions, funding and perceived leniency toward Russia
  • George Katrougalos — foreign funding and pro-authoritarian commentary
• Institutional failures: how UN bodies give influence to rights abusers
• Controversial UN actions and the optics of impartiality
• Why skewed reporting matters: propaganda, legitimacy and consequences
• Practical steps democracies can take to reclaim influence at the UN

A new dossier from UN Watch is rattling the corridors of the United Nations: the people tasked with defending human rights are, in some cases, defending the very regimes that violate them. The report argues that a number of the UN’s independent experts — the so-called “special rapporteurs” — have repeatedly sided with autocratic governments while singling out democratic countries for disproportionate criticism.

Read alongside the UN’s public record, the findings sketch a troubling picture of how international institutions and individual experts can be co-opted into amplifying authoritarian narratives, undermining the credibility of human-rights monitoring at a time when it matters most.

What the UN Watch report uncovered about special rapporteurs and bias

UN Watch’s investigation profiles 13 UN human-rights experts and traces connections between their public statements, travel, and the interests of authoritarian capitals. The report alleges patterns including selective scrutiny, political advocacy that echoes the talking points of dictatorships, and financial or diplomatic ties that raise serious questions about independence.

At the heart of the critique is a claim that these experts are not neutral investigators but, in effect, spokespeople for authoritarian states — portraying Western democracies as the primary threat to rights while downplaying or ignoring abuses by Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.

High-profile examples that fueled controversy

Michael Fakhri — food security and contested judgments

Michael Fakhri, who holds the UN mandate on the right to food, drew criticism after a 2025 visit to Venezuela where he offered unusually conciliatory observations about the government in Caracas. Around the same period he made sweeping accusations against Canada, alleging policies amounting to “genocide” against Indigenous peoples — a charge that many observers found disproportionate compared with his treatment of clear humanitarian crises elsewhere.

Fakhri’s public statements about Gaza — accusing Israel of intentional starvation policies while not addressing Hamas’s role in withholding food from returned hostages — exemplify the selective framing that the UN Watch report highlights as damaging to credibility.

Alena Douhan — sanctions, funding and perceived leniency toward Russia

Alena Douhan, the special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), has been criticized for a sympathetic stance toward Russia’s objections to sanctions regimes and for emphasizing their adverse effects on poorer countries. UN Watch points to disclosed receipts showing she accepted substantial payments linked to state actors: more than $250,000 associated with Russia and over $900,000 connected to China, according to the report. Those financial ties, even where legally declared, have intensified concerns about conflict of interest.

George Katrougalos — foreign funding and pro-authoritarian commentary

George Katrougalos, who occupied the mandate on a democratic and equitable international order, reportedly received $100,000 from Chinese sources in 2025. Following that, he publicly praised aspects of Xi Jinping’s vision and met with Iranian officials to denounce U.S. actions. He has also advocated for expanding permanent representation on the Security Council in ways that critics say would serve geopolitical blocs favored by authoritarian capitals.

Institutional failures: how UN bodies give influence to rights abusers

Beyond individual experts, UN Watch documents structural problems that allow repressive states to wield influence over human-rights decision-making:

• Iran was, at one point, given a role overseeing women’s rights within the UN system — a controversial appointment given Tehran’s record on gender-based discrimination and repression.
• China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia sit on committees that approve which nongovernmental organizations receive access to UN forums, shaping which civil-society voices are heard.
• UN agencies and affiliated bodies have faced scandals — for example, allegations that some UNRWA staff participated in the 7 October attacks — raising questions about internal vetting and operational oversight.

These institutional alignments create a twofold problem: they give autocratic states platforms inside the UN while allowing them to block or undermine criticism from those most affected by rights abuses.

Controversial UN actions and the optics of impartiality

Recent UN decisions have intensified accusations of bias. One flashpoint was the inclusion of Israel on a UN list for parties accused of using sexual violence as a weapon of war — placing a liberal democracy on a roster alongside nonstate groups like Hamas and ISIS, whose campaigns included documented systematic sexual violence. For many observers, that equivalence strained credulity and fed the narrative that the UN has lost its balance.

When the UN treats vastly different actors as moral equals, it damages not only its legitimacy but also the moral clarity needed to protect victims.

Why skewed reporting matters: propaganda, legitimacy and consequences

The stakes go beyond reputational harm. UN pronouncements carry weight in courts, policy debates, and media coverage. When experts or bodies echo authoritarian talking points, they:

• Provide an international imprimatur that can be used to justify repressive policies at home;
• Undermine domestic and international efforts to hold perpetrators accountable;
• Confuse public understanding of who is responsible for rights violations, complicating humanitarian responses.

Authoritarian states benefit when international institutions lend them respectability. The result is a perverse incentive structure where abusive regimes gain legitimacy while democracies are disproportionately attacked in human-rights fora.

Practical steps democracies can take to reclaim influence at the UN

Policymakers who view the UN as salvageable argue there are concrete measures available to restore credibility and limit manipulation by hostile states:

• Freeze or condition funding to specific UN programs pending independent audits.
• Demand transparent declarations of gifts, travel, and funding for any mandate holders, with independent oversight of potential conflicts of interest.
• Insist on robust vetting and accountability mechanisms for agency staff and affiliated personnel, including UNRWA and other operational arms.
• Press for reform of committee appointments so that states with entrenched rights abuses cannot chair or block access to civil-society actors.
• Use diplomatic channels to push back publicly when UN reports display clear bias, rather than treating every statement as equally authoritative.

Supporters of reform say these steps would not merely punish missteps but would rebuild institutional guardrails that prevent capture by autocratic interests.

Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer, policy adviser and researcher.

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