The UN's Own Investigators Fired Staff Who Helped Plan October 7 Massacre — And the System That Hired Them Keeps Collecting Western Cash
A UN Watch investigation reveals UN agencies employed staff who participated in the October 7 massacre while 'independent experts' accept millions from authoritarian regimes to attack Western democracies.
The United Nations was built to protect victims of abuse. Instead, it has become one of the most effective propaganda machines for the world's worst dictators — and Western governments keep paying for it. A 104-page UN Watch report released May 26 confirms what critics have long alleged: UN "independent experts" take millions from authoritarian regimes while attacking Western democracies, and the organization's own agencies employed people who participated in the October 7 massacre.
The investigation, "From Watchdogs to Ideologues," profiles 13 of the UN Human Rights Council's 59 Special Procedures mandates and documents the systematic capture of the system by the very regimes it is supposed to monitor. This is not a broken system. It is a weaponized one.
The evidence is visceral. Israeli intelligence identified at least 12 UNRWA employees who took part in the October 7, 2023 massacre. The UN's own internal investigation unit, OIOS, gathered enough evidence to fire nine of them. A separate USAID Inspector General probe found four more UNRWA staff members tied to Hamas or the attacks. The agency that Western taxpayers fund to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza employed people who helped plan and execute one of the worst atrocities in Israel's history.
The financial rot runs just as deep. Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, received $1.3 million in earmarked funding from China, Russia and Qatar while defining Western sanctions on dictatorships as illegal. The breakdown includes nearly $980,000 from China, over $265,000 from Russia and $50,000 from Qatar, according to the UN Watch report. An earlier analysis by the European Centre for Law and Justice, an independent European think tank, confirmed portions of Douhan's funding from China and Qatar.
Douhan's official visits took her to Tehran, Beijing, Damascus, Doha, Caracas and Harare — all authoritarian regimes. "If a judge took $1.3 million from one of the parties, they would be immediately disqualified and removed from the bench," said Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director, who confronted Douhan at a UNHRC panel in December 2025.
The pattern extends across the mandates profiled. George Katrougalos took $100,000 from China in 2025, then promoted Xi Jinping's book and met with Iranian officials in Tehran to denounce American "crimes." Ben Saul received $150,000 from China while refusing to issue statements on Uyghur persecution. In December 2025, he called for the arrest of the U.S. president and Defense Secretary Hegseth for "mass murder."
Michael Fakhri, the special rapporteur on the right to food, praised Venezuela's Maduro regime during an official visit while accusing Canada of genocide against indigenous peoples. He led international accusations that Israel used starvation as a weapon of genocide in Gaza, finding nothing to say about Hamas visibly starving its own hostages. His UN General Assembly report included what UN Watch described as "grotesque antisemitic" comic illustrations drawn from classic antisemitic motifs.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the special rapporteur on the right to health, declared that "Hamas are not terrorists" and endorsed "the legitimacy of armed struggle." South Africa's Health Professions Council subsequently found her guilty of unprofessional conduct and fined her.
Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on Palestine, has been condemned by multiple Western governments. She compared Israel to the Nazis, participated in a Hamas-organized conference and told an audience "You have a right to resist." The U.S. government sanctioned her — an action a U.S. appeals court ordered reinstated in May 2026. France, Germany, Canada, Italy and the Netherlands condemned her for antisemitism and Holocaust inversion.
Structural capture ensures authoritarian control extends beyond individual rapporteurs. In April, ECOSOC nominated Iran to the Committee for Program and Coordination, which oversees women's rights, human rights, disarmament and terrorism prevention. China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia and Sudan were elected to the Committee on NGOs, controlling accreditation of thousands of human rights groups, according to a UN Watch press release issued April 10, 2026.
The United States was the only ECOSOC member to object, per the UN Watch press release and the U.S. Mission to the UN. "Appointing China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to oversee the work of human rights activists is like putting Al Capone in charge of fighting organized crime," Neuer said. "Electing Iran to protect women's rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief."
The system actively weaponizes its authority against liberal democracies. On May 28, the UN Secretary-General's annual Conflict-Related Sexual Violence report placed Israel on the same blacklist as Hamas and ISIS — alongside Russia. The UN documented 9,788 verified cases of sexual violence worldwide yet chose to equate Israel with Hamas, a group that committed sexual violence during the October 7 massacre.
"We are done with this U.N. secretary-general," said Israel's Ambassador Danny Danon. "Guterres has put Israel on the same blacklist along with Hamas, ISIS and the most depraved terrorist organizations in the world. This is a moral disgrace." U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz condemned the UN for putting Israel "on the same level as terrorist organizations like Hamas & ISIS which DELIBERATELY target civilians for sexual violence."
The Trump administration's response now appears validated. President Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 4, 2025, withdrawing the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council, ending funding to UNRWA and the Human Rights Council and ordering comprehensive review of all U.S. support to international organizations. By January 2026, the U.S. had withdrawn from 66 international organizations.
"The UN's human rights system was founded to protect victims of abuse," Neuer said. "Instead, it is being manipulated to attack democracies and shield some of the world's worst human rights violators." The UN Watch report documents financial conflicts of interest, ethical breaches and near-total absence of accountability across the mandates it profiles.
Limor Simhony Philpott argues in Spiked Online that calls for "reform" miss the point. "You cannot reform a rotting corpse," she wrote June 4. "The problem is that the UN continually hands influence to regimes that abuse human rights most egregiously, granting authoritarian propaganda a veneer of legitimacy."
"The UN has become one of the most dangerous instruments in modern geopolitics," Philpott continued. "Authoritarian regimes are using the UN's prestige to normalise their behavior, conceal their crimes and peddle anti-Western propaganda."
The path forward is not engagement with a captured system but decisive action to cut its funding and purge compromised staff. "The time for decisive action is now," Philpott wrote. "One way for democracies to reclaim control is by freezing funding, forcing audits and purging compromised staff who are actively on the payroll of hostile regimes."
Continued Western funding of the UN human rights apparatus only enables the assault on liberal democracies. The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed by its authoritarian architects, turning international human rights monitoring into a propaganda weapon against the very values it was created to protect.