Like Open Society, Qatar and China pay the UN “Independent Experts”.

What do I do if I want to influence the position of an international organization? Do I run after the individual states that are part of it? No, I finance the experts who, with their reports, provide input for subsequent decisions.

In July 2021, the ECLJ (European Center for Law and Justice) denounced the funding of UN experts beyond the control of the United Nations. In fact, in five years, 37 United Nations experts had received 11 million dollars from state and private actors (mainly from the Open Society and Ford foundations). Since then, the situation hasn't improved; on the contrary, the arrival of new lenders continues to destabilize the international system of human rights protection, taking advantage of the door opened by these foundations and by states. Among these new lenders, China and Qatar are starting to invest in the influence system that, frankly, borders on corruption. While in the European Parliament Qatar has been accused of having corrupted several members, in the UN the same strategy seems to be implemented in a legal and diplomatic stain which, so far, has not been able to prevent this serious phenomenon of capture of the institution. The analysis of the available financial data allows us to measure the action of these new investors.

Between 2021 and 2022, Alena Douhan of Belarus, special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, reported receiving two payments from Qatar in the amount of $50,000. Prior to her first grant from Qatar in 2021, she said in a report that she was invited to the country from November 1 to 12, 2020 (A/HRC/45/7). On that occasion, he had already defended the country, deploring the lack of a comprehensive mechanism for human rights protection, accountability and reparation for those whose rights have been violated by the unilateral sanctions. In the visit report (A/HRC/48/59/Add.1), he explained that the purpose of the trip was to “assess the impact of the unilateral sanctions imposed on the state by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the human rights of people living in Qatar, in the four sanctioning states and on other people affected by these measures”. This year, he also denounced sanctions aimed at closing the airspace to flights by airlines registered in Qatar and other countries (A/76/174/Rev.1). It is nothing short of surprising that a United Nations special rapporteur is leading a mission to Qatar, funded by Qatar itself, to pass judgment on the quality of human rights in the country itself.

It's not over: between 2020 and 2022, Alena Douhan received $560,000 from China. In a 2020 report to the United Nations General Assembly (A/75/209), the rapporteur denounced the US policy of sanctions, particularly against China. In 2021, the Special Rapporteur also deplored “the significant effects that secondary sanctions against companies can have on human rights”. In particular, he cited the 2020 US sanctions case against a Chinese company, the China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation: “Since the company's products are used for public defense and security, secondary sanctions that hinder the company's ability to do business may constitute an obstacle to the protection of certain rights, ultimately including the right to life”. (A/76/174/Rev.1) Obviously his judgment was not influenced by the $560,000 received from Beijing….

Between 2021 and 2022, Felipe González Morales, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, also received a grant of $260,000 from China. It seems that these Chinese payments are on the rise. Indeed, between 2015 and 2019, China had provided only a grant of $100,000, while between 2020 and 2023, this amount increased to $820,000. Qatar's total payments amount to $286,000 between 2016 and 2022.

To complain about this situation, when they have so extensively and unrestrainedly funded, or even bought out, the special rapporteurs? For example, Norway, Switzerland, the European Union, South Korea, Finland, France, Germany and Spain made voluntary contributions to certain mandates of almost $14 million between 2015 and 2022. Similarly, in 2015, the Foundation Ford funded Juan Méndez, Special Rapporteur on Torture, $90,000 to write a report on gender and torture. This report was released by the United Nations on January 5, 2016 with no reference by the speaker to the generosity of the Ford Foundation.

There are no objective criteria for distinguishing between money from a “good” lender, which could be accepted, and that from a “bad” lender, which should be rejected. According to former UN expert Gabor Rona, the issue of financial support is necessarily politicized, but "there is no way to establish objective criteria around which states could come together to determine which states are on the green list and which on the red". Some countries, universities and foundations, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, have opened the door to this type of funding for United Nations experts, while the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has turned a blind eye. We shouldn't be surprised or complained that China, Qatar and, why not, one day Iran and North Korea too, are investing financially in international mechanisms for defining and protecting human rights.

To counter this phenomenon, which a former UN Special Rapporteur called "silent corruption," the UN Human Rights Council should ban any funder from awarding a grant to a particular mandate. All grants should be offered unconditionally, directly to OHCHR for it to award independently. This would be a first step in ensuring greater protection for the Human Rights Council and its influential experts against the attempted captures seen today. But for now the interests of the experts are excessive and it is still not possible to separate them. So we have to either adapt to these manipulated reports, or start disregarding them.

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The article How Open Society, Qatar and China pay the UN "Independent Experts" comes from Scenari Economics .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/ppcome-open-society-qatar-e-cippna-pagano-gli-esperti-indipendenti-onu-de/ on Thu, 30 Mar 2023 17:02:10 +0000.