The Trump administration imposed the sanctions after accusing Albanese of “biased and malicious activities” and “lawfare,” including recommending that the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
“It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion,” Leon said in his decision.
(May 15, 2026)
Judge Leon made preliminary findings that President Donald Trump’s administration likely violated Albanese’s right to free speech by imposing sanctions against her. In his 26-page decision, he discussed the applicability of the First Amendment to Albanese, including an extensive discussion of the significance of free expression. He wrote:
Albanese has done nothing more than speak! It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions–they are nothing more than her opinion… Finally, protecting the freedom of speech is “always” in the public interest… Indeed, the “proudest boast” of our First Amendment is that it protects the freedom to express even “the thought that we hate.” Enough said.
(May 13, 2026)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed the sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, last July under an executive order President Donald Trump signed authorizing such actions against people “directly engaged” in the International Criminal Court’s investigations related to alleged atrocities in Gaza.
However, in a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the administration’s sanctions against Albanese violate the First Amendment because they’re based solely on her encouraging the ICC to investigate and prosecute.
(March 8, 2025)
Albanese went on to clarify that UNRWA cannot disappear because it is a UN body protected by international law. „Member states cannot eliminate it by changing laws or cutting funding, as Israel and other countries have attempted. The rights of Palestinian refugees will remain intact because those rights are codified in international law.“
She also raised the issue of Israel’s violations against the UN, citing the destruction of 70% of UN premises in Gaza and the targeting of UNRWA schools, which had been sheltering refugees. „Israel has violated the UN Charter, and it must be held accountable for its actions. I have called for the suspension of Israel‘s credentials in the UN because of its disregard for international rules and laws. Israel has destroyed or damaged UN premises, targeted shelters, and accused the UN of terrorism.“
(May 8, 2026)
As some of you might already know, my name is Hüseyin Doğru. I am a German citizen, a father of three, a journalist, and the founder of red., a now defunct English-language media outlet.
On 20 May 2025, I was placed on an EU sanctions list.
Not after a criminal conviction. Not after a trial. Not after a court had examined evidence against me.
I was placed on a list.
The reason given was not violence. It was not incitement. It was not a finding by any court. The reason was political: my journalism, my reporting on Gaza, and my coverage of Palestine solidarity protests in Germany were folded into the language of Russia, destabilisation, information manipulation and hybrid threats.
Alle haben eines gemeinsam: Sie berichten außerhalb des NATO-/EU-Narrativs – sei es zur Ukraine, zu Gaza oder zur Energiepolitik.
Die Folgen für die Betroffenen sind existentiell: Konten werden eingefroren, Zahlungen blockiert, Reisen innerhalb der EU unmöglich gemacht. Sogar Familienangehörige (wie die nicht sanktionierte Ehefrau von Hüseyin Doğru) werden mit „Sanktionsumgehung“ bedroht. Doğru beschreibt seinen Zustand treffend: „On an existential level, you’re reduced to zero.“ Ein Vater von fünf Kindern kann nicht einmal mehr Windeln oder Medikamente kaufen, ohne dass Helfer Gefahr laufen, selbst strafrechtlich verfolgt zu werden.
A future Democratic-controlled Congress should take up the job that Obama and the party’s old guard abandoned: put strict limits on the use of drones that won’t simply be alternately loosened and tightened by whichever president comes to power, explicitly outlawing “targeted killing” and any other attempt at finding a loophole for the already existing ban on assassinations; finally repeal the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force that has been serially abused by presidents to fight often secret wars all over the world; end mass surveillance, whether in the form of the National Security Agency’s warrantless backdoor searches that Democrats actually expanded under Joe Biden, or in the warrantless spying that the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies now do through private data brokers; close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp that Trump is now trying to send migrants to; and embark on a twenty-first-century version of the Church Committee to investigate and lay bare national security abuses.
In between these two violent attacks, US President Donald Trump withdrew from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN entities, and launched the Board of Peace, a new institution he chairs personally that he suggested might replace the UN.
These and other developments in recent years demonstrate that the world order the US helped establish in 1945 no longer serves its interests.
(…)
A powerful first step would be relocating the UN headquarters from New York as an acknowledgment of reality. Why should the world body remain in a nation that is withdrawing from so many of its parts and building alternatives?
These are trying times.
When President Metsola invited me in September at the High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly, the world felt already chaotic. I warned of a make-or-break moment for our multilateral system.
Today, only 40 days into 2026:
Venezuela.
Iran.
Greenland.
On top of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and so many more crises.
The international order is not only under pressure, it is under attack.
And we face a new and more troubling kind of crisis: conflicts waged not even under the pretense of self-defense or respect for international law but often carried out in open defiance of it.
At precisely the moment when we most need cooperation, most need the United Nations, powers, even those who have a special responsibility to protect peace and security, are pulling away from it or even outright attacking it.
This geopolitical shift towards a world where ‘might makes right’, contradicts more than a century of hard, bloody lessons, which people of this region remember all too well.
Rules and standards drawn from these experiences, which were believed to be set in stone, are now openly questioned, dismissed, or violated.
History teaches us that large systems rarely collapse in one dramatic moment.
They erode slowly. Rule by rule. Commitment by commitment.
With those who should defend them, rather staying silent.
Until one day, what seemed permanent simply vanishes.
(February 10, 2026)
In a key address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Annalena Baerbock repeated her call to uphold multilateralism amid “trying times” globally.
She noted that just 40 days into 2026, the world has already seen crises around Venezuela, Iran and Greenland, on top of continuing devastation in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere.
“The international order is not only under pressure, it is under attack,” she told lawmakers.
“And we face a new and more troubling kind of crisis: conflicts waged not even under the pretence of self-defence or respect for international law but often carried out in open defiance of it.”
She warned that at precisely the moment the world most needs cooperation and the UN, “powers – even those who have a special responsibility to protect peace and security – are pulling away from it or even outright attacking it.”
Ms. Baerbock recalled that four years ago, when she was Germany’s Foreign Minister, she addressed the General Assembly and called for the UN to stand up for Europe’s peace as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Today, I’m coming as President of the General Assembly to Europe, calling for Europe to stand up for the United Nations because the world needs the UN. But right now, the UN and its principles as enshrined in the Charter, needs the world too,” she said, referring to all continents.
“States claiming to uphold human rights, justice and the rule of law should invest their time and energy in holding to account perpetrators of egregious human rights violations, rather than targeting those investigating and exposing international crimes in an objective way,” the Committee said.
The Committee reminded States that the Special Rapporteur is mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to “investigate Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law, international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War … in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.”
“Instead of demanding Ms Albanese’s resignation for performing her mandate in very challenging circumstances – including persistent intimidation, coordinated personal attacks and unlawful unilateral sanctions – these Government representatives should join forces to hold accountable, including before the International Criminal Court, leaders and officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza,” the Committee said.
The UN Coordination Committee – a body of six independent experts which coordinates and facilitates the work of Special Rapporteurs – accused European ministers of relying on „manufactured facts“.
„Instead of demanding Ms Albanese‘s resignation for performing her mandate…these government representatives should join forces to hold accountable, including before the International Criminal Court, leaders and officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza,“ the Committee said.
(June 30, 2025)
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 investigates the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and Governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide. The complicity exposed by the report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including# its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.
(December 6, 2025)
At the Doha Forum, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese outlined how US sanctions imposed over her Gaza reports have effectively removed her from the global financial system. She said the measures, which she calls unlawful, have had a major impact on her everyday life.
(February 14, 2026)
She will continue to expose Israel’s crimes whether she is the UN’s Special Rapporteur or not. My message to them is simple: Francesca Albanese may be even more successful in shining light on Israel’s genocide if you strip her of her UN role. Beware what you wish for!
(February 8, 2026)
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UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the results of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis were no mystery: “It is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment – and a failure of humanity itself.
“Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival.”
Famine conditions are projected to spread from Gaza Governorate to Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks, the IPC estimates.
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UN agencies have collectively and consistently highlighted the extreme urgency of delivering immediate and full-scale humanitarian aid given the escalating hunger-related deaths, rapidly worsening levels of acute malnutrition and plummeting levels of food consumption in Gaza – with hundreds of thousands going days without anything to eat.
“As the occupying power, Israel has unequivocal obligations under international law – including the duty of ensuring food and medical supplies of the population,” said the UN chief, reacting to the famine declaration from the IPC, which is endorsed by dozens of governments, UN agencies and NGOs as the key evidence-based measure of food insecurity and malnutrition.
See our UN News explainer here.
Mr. Guterres said Israel’s denial of its duties could not be allowed to continue: “No more excuses. The time for action is not tomorrow – it is now.”
“These latest killings highlight the extreme risks journalists continue to face when covering the ongoing war,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said during his regular media briefing from New York.
“The Secretary-General calls for an independent and impartial investigation into these latest killings.”
“Unless urgent action is taken…most international NGO partners could be de-registered by 9 September or sooner – forcing them to withdraw all international staff and preventing them from providing critical, lifesaving humanitarian assistance to Palestinians,” said UN and partner aid organizations that are known collectively as the Humanitarian Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
The UN understands that organizations must now submit, amongst others, details of representatives and all employees in-country, including Palestinian and foreign workers, with full identification and contact details.
Meanwhile, according to UNRWA latest findings: one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day.
When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food & care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold.
Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need.
More than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have reportedly died of hunger.
This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave.
UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all. They are increasingly fainting from hunger while at work.
When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing.
Parents are too hungry to care for their children.
Those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice.
Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive.
Their existence is threatened.
Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
We, at UNRWA, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt.“
—UNRWA Commissioner-General @UNLazzarini
(July 15, 2025)
Francesca Albanese: … I mean, yesterday, yes, I woke up to the news of the sanctions. I mean, I had heard about that and then I read the night before and then I needed to get some time to realize what it was. But then I had my cup of tea, I had my shower, I spoke with my kids and went on with my life. Well, again, dozens and dozens of Palestinians were killed yesterday alone. And this is every day in Gaza. People are being starved. I‘m so exhausted to see the bodies of dying kids, starving kids in the arms of their moms. It‘s something that we cannot tolerate, we cannot, and I don‘t know what kind of monstrosity has infected all of us.
Right now, Glenn, what member states should be doing, especially those in the Mediterranean area, should send their navies with doctors, nurses, and real humanitarian aid, food, baby formula, medicines, everything that is needed for the Palestinians to overcome the current difficulty.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is appalled by the accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where the last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing, his Spokesperson said on Monday.
(July 14, 2025)
“This week, the dominoes are falling,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “First, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the historic decision to sanction Francesca Albanese, the UN’s pro-Hamas rapporteur, in wake of a massive campaign led by UN Watch. Now the architects of the UN’s anti-Israel inquisition are fleeing the ship. The tide is turning.”
(July 16, 2025)
The letters were posted on a back-end Human Rights Council website and first publicised by UN Watch, a nonprofit monitoring group.
The commission will continue to exist once new members are appointed. Jürg Lauber, head of the Human Rights Council, has asked member states to propose replacements by 31 August.
(today / July 11, 2025)
Agnes Callamard, head of the world’s leading human rights organisation Amnesty International and a former special rapporteur, said the UN should act to shield Albanese from the impact of sanctions.
“I think what is more likely to have an impact is other governments, including Albanese’s own government and the EU to take a very strong stand against the sanctions,” she told Middle East Eye.
“But we cannot let the UN off the hook, and we do need to demand that it responds to the attack.”
Guterres‘s spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday denounced the sanctions as “unacceptable” but did not outline concrete measures that will be taken to protect Albanese.
(July 10, 2025)
Reacting to the announcement, UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that the imposition of sanctions on Special Rapporteurs sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“The use of unilateral sanctions against Special Rapporteurs or any other UN expert or official is unacceptable,” he told journalists on Thursday at his regular news briefing in New York.