In July 2025, the United States unilaterally sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, an unprecedented move against a UN official that raises questions about power, accountability, and international law’s ability to deliver justice. Albanese has since spoken candidly about the personal toll and moral stakes of being sanctioned by the U.S. for carrying out her UN mandate. The sanctions came in response to Albanese’s June 2025 report documenting U.S. corporate ties to Israel’s occupation of Palestine, a system she describes as an “economy of genocide” amid the ongoing devastation in Gaza. Albanese’s support for accountability, including her support for the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, has further provoked Washington’s ire. The U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, and has long opposed the Court’s jurisdiction over its nationals and allies. Calling the sanctions a campaign of intimidation designed to silence the truth, Albanese has refused to back down, warning that this is what happens to those who stand in solidarity with justice. Albanese’s family has recently sued the Trump administration, arguing the sanctions were imposed to punish her for exposing human rights abuses and violating her First Amendment rights. The case highlights longstanding objections to the U.S. government’s use of unilateral sanctions against individuals it disagrees with. That the U.S. has sanctioned a UN special rapporteur, the first case in the organization’s 80-year history, following sanctions on the ICC and sanctions on individual ICC judges, including two more in December 2025, signals a dangerous escalation: the use of unilateral sanctions as a weapon against international justice, in defiance of UN immunity, and the legal order the U.S. has claimed to defend.
Unilateral Sanctions and International Law
Unlike UN Security Council (UNSC)–mandated sanctions, which are binding to all Member States, unilateral sanctions operate outside the UN framework. Unilateral sanctions, also known as Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs), are illegal under international law, yet the United States routinely uses them, wielding its economic power to punish perceived threats and advance foreign policy. The UNSC has implemented 31 sanctions regimes, with 14 active; in contrast, the EU’s sanctions regimes amount to between 40 and 50, and the U.S. has 38, including over 17,000 individuals and entities. The rise of unilateral sanctions undermines the Security Council and deepens the divide between sanctioning states, which frame them as “restrictive measures,” and sanctioned states, which condemn them as UCMs. Multiple UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions have deemed UCMs illegal for their harm to civilians, their incompatibility with the UN Charter, and their obstruction of development and human rights. Their extraterritorial enforcement further violates state sovereignty, principles of jurisdiction and non-intervention, and conflicts with obligations under international trade law, investment agreements, treaties of friendship and commerce, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In sanctioning Albanese as a UN Special Rapporteur, which is mandated by the Human Rights Council, the measures against her violate the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. As a signatory to the UN’s convention on privileges and immunities since 1970, the U.S. has the legal obligation to ensure experts have “immunity from legal process of every kind” for “words spoken or written and acts done by them in the course of the performance of their mission,” an obligation that the U.S. has violated.
Given the centrality of the U.S. financial system, U.S. unilateral sanctions effectively erase individuals from the global financial system, severely restricting their ability to operate internationally. Albanese has described the practical effects: Her credit cards were cancelled, she lost access to assets, her medical insurance was denied, and hotel reservations for work were canceled. She is also unable to receive anything from U.S. citizens (her daughter is a U.S. citizen) and has been blocked from entry into U.S. territory (the UN headquarters are in New York). Sanctioned ICC judges report similar restrictions with accessing financial services, blocked communications, U.S. travel bans, and spillover effects on their families. The measures subject these individuals to the same restrictive framework used in U.S. counterterrorism designations, despite their roles as legal and human rights experts. These challenges have appeared in other contexts; for instance, the U.S. unilaterally imposed Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 severely hindered the UN’s humanitarian operations in Syria by limiting the organization’s ability to pay staff, import supplies, and reach civilians in need. Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights, warned that the sanctions in Syria contributed to human rights violations and undermined the right to development, disproportionately harming civilians.
UN Response
While the Secretary-General’s office has condemned the U.S. sanctioning of Albanese as setting a dangerous precedent and urged Member States to engage with the UN human rights system, there has been limited action within the UN system itself to actively protect her. On behalf of the Secretary-General, the UN Legal Counsel wrote to the U.S. Mission to the UN affirming Albanese’s official UN mandate and asserting that she retains UN privileges and immunities, including immunity from legal processes. UN experts have urged States to condemn the sanctions, refuse to cooperate in their implementation, and reaffirm their commitment to UN Special Rapporteurs, Working Groups, and Independent Experts. The Coordination Committee of the Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures warned that the sanctions represent a continued assault by the U.S. administration on the UN system. It stressed that Albanese has broken no rules and has acted in compliance with the Code of Conduct for mandate holders. Her mandate, given by the Human Rights Council, is to assess the human rights situation, in accordance with international law, humanitarian law, and the Geneva Convention in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 — a mandate she has carried out.
Threat to Human Rights and the International Legal System
UN experts have voiced alarm over the U.S. sanctions on Francesca Albanese, emphasizing that her independent reporting is vital to upholding international legal standards and accountability. Her work rigorously documents human rights and humanitarian law violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including forcible transfers, systemic discrimination, and international crimes. Targeting her not only threatens the impartiality of evidence-based human rights reporting, but also undermines the UN Special Procedures system and mandates made by the Human Rights Council. Experts have warned that such actions set a dangerous precedent: They chill global human rights advocacy, intimidate defenders, and protect abusive power structures from scrutiny, putting the broader human rights framework itself at risk.
The sanctions against the ICC in February 2025, and subsequent additions of individual ICC judges, threaten the Court’s work and the international legal system as a whole. The broad nature of the sanctions chill investigations by targeting anyone assisting investigations or providing testimony. Any U.S. citizen or person who works in the U.S. that interacts with Albanese or the sanctioned ICC judges risks going to jail for 20 years, creating a chilling effect on their ability to investigate. The U.S. has continuously issued sanctions against individual ICC judges it disagrees with, for instance those involved with probes regarding U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and Israeli war crime investigations. In September, sanctions were also imposed on three non-governmental organizations for helping the ICC. These intimidation tactics, used against people for doing their jobs, threaten the system of international law.
Where Does the System of Global Governance Go From Here?
Ultimately, sanctioning experts who are granted immunity for presenting evidence of alleged crimes exposes a stark double standard in the enforcement of international accountability mechanisms. It also underscores the reality that only powerful states with significant economic leverage are able to impose punitive measures on those they choose to target. As the hub of the global financial system and host of the United Nations in New York, the U.S. wields outsized influence both in punishing those whose recommendations it opposes and in shaping who is able to participate in discussions at the UN — power that has also been exercised through visa denials affecting participants from the Global South and countries viewed as U.S. adversaries. Punishing those who seek accountability for human rights abuses threatens the foundations of global governance and raises the question: How can justice prevail if those pursuing it are punished for doing their jobs? The targeting of the Special Rapporteur is not happening in isolation. It is tied to the grave abuses facing Palestinians and to a long-standing campaign to undermine those who speak out for their rights. The intimidation of human rights defenders, whether scholars, civil society actors, or UN experts, is part of a broader effort to silence criticism and shield abuses of power from scrutiny.
