The report “The Financing of UN Experts” comes on the heels of ECLJ’s similarly revealing report on the influence of Open Society and other left-wing NGOs on the European Court of Human Rights, “ECHR: Conflicts of Interest Between Judges and NGOs” (Gateway Pundit reported).
The ECHR was key in enshrining a radical Open Borders policy in the EU since the landmark 2012 “Hirsi Jamaa and Others v Italy” case, which first criminalized border security as so-called “pushbacks” or “refoulement,” and obliged countries like Italy to let in illegal migrants or pay €15,000 “damages” to each illegal migrant.
Similarly, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva pushes to enshrine Open Borders and the “rights of (illegal) migrants”, and other radical progressive policies in so-called “international law”.
The ECLJ report found that the UN Human Rights Commissioner relies increasingly on funding from “a small number” of foundations and NGOs, “in particular the Ford, Open Society, MacArthur, Call for Code (founded and chaired by Bill Clinton) Foundations, as well as Microsoft, Counterpart International, and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.”
52 of 222 Special Rapporteurs from Left-Wing NGOs
The research was based on “a series of interviews with UN experts and on the analysis of financial disclosures published annually between 2015 and 2019 by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights”, the OHCHR Special Rapporteurs, as well as by the main foundations funding the system, “namely the Ford and Open Society foundations.”
At least 52 of the 222 Special Rapporteurs since 2010 hold, or have held, positions in Open Society or an NGO funded by the Ford or Open Society Foundations, such as the Center for Reproductive Rights or the International Center for Transitional Justice, the ECLJ report found. Among these 52 experts, fourteen have exercised (or still exercise) responsibility within Amnesty International. Twelve experts exercise some responsibility within the International Commission of Jurists. Six experts hold responsibilities within Open Society Foundations, four hold responsibilities within Human Rights Watch, and one expert is involved with the Helsinki Committee.
Between 2015 and 2019, 40% of the OHCHR Special Procedures budget came from such extra-budgetary funding from a few states, NGOs, and private foundations, ECLJ writes. The study found a “lack of transparency” in external funding by NGOs and “a growing phenomenon of capture of the Human Rights Council system by a few actors.”
Theoretically, UN Special Rapporteurs require “independence, impartiality, personal integrity, and objectivity”, according to Resolution 5/1 of June 18, 2007. Experts must take an oath to “exercise my functions from a completely impartial, loyal and conscientious standpoint … without seeking or accepting any instruction from any other party whatsoever.”
Opaque Finances
However, UN Experts are currently allowed to receive funds directly from external NGOs, “avoiding the OHCHR’s control and monetary deductions”, ECLJ writes. “These direct funds are markedly opaque.” Thus financial statements were either omitted or opaque, as were the terms and purposes of payments and the agreements with donors.
According to one expert, this “gray area” is expanding dangerously, as direct donations increased from $2,099,503 to $2,646,678 per year between 2015 and 2019.
“Between 2015 and 2019, 37 of 121 experts reported receiving an additional 134 direct financial payments totaling $10,725,328, mostly from private donors. One expert reported receiving more than $2 million, another expert more than $1 million, six others more than $500,000, and a further eleven more than $100,000″, ECLJ reports.
“$5,515,523 were paid by private foundations and NGOs, of which $2,190,000 was paid by the Ford Foundation to nine mandate-holders and $1,584,517 was paid by the Open Society Foundations to six mandate-holders. Four mandate-holders were funded by both the Ford and Open Society Foundations.” One expert, the head of an NGO, reports that she hired eight salaried staff to support her work thanks to Open Society funds.
UN Experts Financially Dependent on NGOs
Since they are expected to be volunteers and not paid for their services to the UN, such experts can even be financially dependent on NGOs for their salaries, ECLJ reports. “This is a tricky issue, as … their Code of Conduct prohibits them from receiving ‘remuneration from any governmental or non-governmental source for activities carried out in pursuit of [their] mandate[s]’. One expert noted, however, ‘you have to be paid by someone.’ Thus, the Ford Foundation paid $100,000 in 2017 to an expert’s employing NGO to give her time off to work on her mandate.”
Although they are required to be objective, all the experts interviewed “recognize direct payments influence the experts’ political agenda“, the report states. “According to experts, the intentions of funders are always political.”
A former Special Rapporteur of an important mandate said that the first people to contact and meet with him upon his election were the representatives of the Open Society in Geneva, ECLJ reports. OSF even “contributed to the creation of his mandate and very generously financed his predecessor,” who received “considerable amounts [of money].”
The former Rapporteur said, “I mean, of course, you get money from the Soros Foundation and then you do what they ask.”
While it is hard to objectively establish the precise influence that NGO funding has on OHCHR Experts, Open Society Foundations openly acknowledged it wanted to “influence” an expert on its own website in one case, stating that it paid $100,000 in 2017 to the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), a feminist activist center attached to Rutgers University, with the purpose of “influencing the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, its causes and consequences.”
“The goal was to get the Special Rapporteur to recognize domestic work as a form of slavery. That goal was achieved, when in the following year, that Special Rapporteur, Urmila Bhoola, devoted her annual thematic report, published under the UN’s label, examining “the impact of slavery and servitude on marginalized migrant women workers in the global domestic economy.”
The UN Goes Woke
“Unsurprisingly, the latest report of the UN Working Group on Ending Discrimination against Women, presented to the Human Rights Council in July 2021, is steeped in radical activism”, ECLJ writes. “The (UN ) report begins by castigating “centuries of patriarchal, colonial and racialized legal and policy frameworks and institutions.”
“Patriarchal oppression, pervasive gender stereotypes, stigma and taboos” are not just a legacy of the past, but a problem exacerbated by “rising fundamentalism,” the UN now finds.
The UN now equates “unplanned pregnancies” with actual violence against women and recommends that states and “non-state actors, such as armed groups,” ensure that women actually “exercise” their “sexual and reproductive rights,” referring chiefly to abortion.
The UN also calls on states to “take measures to combat toxic masculinity,” without defining or introducing this concept from gender studies. The UN report goes so far as to equate doctors’ conscientious objection to abortion with an act of “torture” inflicted on women, stating that “the refusal or postponement of an abortion” constitutes a “form of gender-based violence that can be equated with torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” From the report, motherhood does not even seem to be an option for women, whose “sexual and reproductive health” would appear to consist only of access to contraception and abortion.
