Leftist Billionaires Pay UN Experts to Promote Their Political Agenda

By | August 12, 2021

NEW YORK, August 13 (C-Fam) Billionaires and private foundations pay millions of dollars into the UN human rights system each year to turn progressive political goals into human rights obligations.

The Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, and other powerful international private foundations use their power and wealth to shape the opinions of UN human rights experts, according to a report of the European Center for Law and Justice.

The report details how private money is pouring into the UN human rights system without any transparency, compromising the independence and impartiality of UN experts.

The report was prepared through interviews with twenty-eight former and current UN human rights experts who recognized the problem of private money flowing into the UN human rights system to buy influence.

Gregor Puppinck, President of the European Center for Law and Justice, said the lack of transparency with regard to voluntary funding is especially problematic during a webinar hosted by the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), publisher of the Friday Fax.

The UN budget only allocates $68 million annually to cover the costs of travel and overhead expenses of the experts and their staff, which covers less than 60% of the budget of UN experts. The excess funding comes from governments and private foundations, often contributing money directly to the experts.

Typically, UN experts will only report that a direct grant was received, sometimes without disclosing the total amount the sum, its source, or any information about earmarks. Sometimes the grant amount is not disclosed and at times there is a discrepancy between the amounts the experts claim to have received and the amounts declared by private foundations in their annual reports.

“There is no obligation to publish the money received. It is only a moral obligation but not a legal one,” Puppinck explained.

The report, currently available only in French, looks specifically at a network of funding mechanisms that the Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and other philanthropic groups use to fund the UN Special Procedures in order to promote gender ideology and leftist policy preferences.

Special Procedures are UN human rights experts who work individually or in working groups to promote a specific human rights portfolio. There are special procedures for the right to freedom of belief, the right to health, against torture, and many other human rights topics. All experts are commissioned by the Human Rights Council and receive no remuneration their service in order to preserve their independence.

Puppinck said the capture of the UN human rights system by deep-pocketed private entities is causing untold damage to democracy and human rights around the world.

“International institutions can become themselves a danger for freedom and the rights of individuals,” Puppinck said.  “Today, as a consequence, we see people calling for the sovereignty of the state to protect them from the excesses of the European Union and the United Nations.”

“You can have at the national level different opinions on what is good and just. You can debate,” he explained, “But at the international level, especially in the area of human rights, there is no such debate. There is only one liberal philosophy of human rights that prevails.”

The report is the second report from the European Center for Law and Justice to look at the political influence of the Open Society Foundation on international institutions. A first report published last year showed that 22% of all judges of the European Court for Human Rights had links to the Open Society Foundation.

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