US announces sanctions against controversial UN Special Rapporteur

The United States has announced that it is imposing sanctions on a notorious ‘Special Rapporteur’ to the United Nations, accusing her of a “campaign of political and economic warfare against Israel and the United States.”

In a statement on Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was “imposing sanctions” on Francesca Albanese “for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defence. The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”

Albanese, who has served as a Special Rapporteur since 2022, is a longstanding vehement critic of Israel, who has accused the country of apartheid and most recently of genocide. She has urged boycotts of Israel, as well as calling on the UN to consider suspending Israel’s credentials as a member state of the United Nations.

Past statements by Albanese include her notorious 2014 description of “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust.” She has been accused of repeatedly engaging in Holocaust inversion in her reports, with the World Jewish Congress describing these as “not only deeply offensive, but a gross distortion of history.” In 2023, in response to French President Emmanuel Macron describing the 7 October attacks as “the largest antisemitic massacre of our century”, Albanese said “the victims of the October 7 massacre were killed not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israeli oppression”. She has also called for top EU officials “to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for Israel’s 19 month of assault on Gaza” and most recently criticised Greece, Italy and France for letting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been targeted by an ICC arrest warrant, fly over their airspace on his trip to Washington DC this week.

The US, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the ICC, has strongly condemned its actions relating to Israel. In February, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14203 – Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court – which includes visa restrictions and financial penalties for people who help the ICC investigate US citizens and US allies.

In a statement on social media on Wednesday night, Albanese did not directly mention the US sanctions, but wrote that she would stand “firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done.”

Under the sanctions imposed by the US, it is believed that US citizens and companies will be unable to maintain any economic ties with Albanese, if such ties exist.

It is unclear whether Albanese will be able to travel to the United States under a diplomatic passport to avoid such sanctions. If a travel ban does come into effect, it is believed that this would be the first time the United States has barred entry to a prominent figure with close ties to the UN for almost 40 years. In 1987, Kurt Waldheim, the former UN Secretary General and then President of Austria, was prohibited from setting foot on US soil over revelations of his involvement in Nazi war crimes.