Late last month, UN Watch, which monitors the UN, released a report linking private funding of several UN officials to increasingly politicised output from the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). Among those named were South African physician and UNHRC Special Rapporteur for the Right to Health Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, who faced multiple accusations, including serious misconduct and accusations of racism.

Mofokeng possesses a significant portfolio of high-level organisational roles, having previously served on the Commission on Gender Equality in South Africa, and as adviser to the Gates Foundation, as well as the Gauteng Department for Health. She is currently a lecturer at Georgetown University in the United States.

She has served as a Special Rapporteur since 2020, one of several at the UNHRC responsible for the observation and protection of human rights across the globe. Mofokeng plays a crucial role in overseeing the status of health-related matters in various regions such as Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, and North Korea, among others.

According to UN Watch’s report, the UNHRC’s core leadership and its selection process have been corrupted to suit an ideologically led framework of discrediting the West through its promotion of partisan individuals into specific leadership roles.

The report claims that the corruption has manifested as a product of its funding structure, which allows individual donors to directly contribute to any UNHRC mandate of their choosing.

Though often used by private individuals and organisations who act in good faith, the structure has opened itself to abuse, whereby receivers of politically motivated donations become progressively more aligned with said donors each year, in order to secure future funding.

The report further specifies that Rapporteurs who have been identified to have consistently acted with bias received funding from countries such as Russia, China, and Qatar.

Central to the report’s argument of ideological corruption has been the period since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, where the UNHRC had been extensively used as a primary source in the media concerning the welfare of Gazan residents.

Its use as a source, according to UN Watch, has been used to skew public opinion towards a false narrative portraying Israel as a genocidal state.

UN Watch highlights that the UNHRC had failed to engage with other global conflicts with equal vigour, taking a particularly selective stance with regards to scrutinising Israel.

These instances had cited exact figures showcasing each time Israel had been subject to intense grilling, whereas comments on, for example, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were substantially lower in the number of overall statements, and often much weaker in tone.

Since 7 October 2023 (when Hamas attacked Israel), until March 2026, the UNHRC issued 148 statements targeting Israel.

By contrast, during that same time frame, the UNHRC issued only 64 statements, with 29 joint statements condemning Russia over its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, demonstrating both a lower volume and less forceful tone.

Another such example was when several media outlets had cited the UNHRC regarding Israel in 2024, where it accused Israel of creating widespread famine across Gaza. In fact, claimed instances of famine had largely been specific to certain areas of the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and various other organisations provided rations designated for civilians, which were subsequently stolen by Hamas terrorists.

The UNHRC had also failed to sufficiently condemn Hamas, which launched the 7 October attack on Israel – an unsurprising result of their own Rapporteurs’ ideological allegiances, including that of Mofokeng.

Shortly after Hamas’s attack, Mofokeng came out in defence of the organisation, stating they “are not terrorists” explicitly endorsing what she called “an armed struggle”.

She had also shown support for an eliminationist one-state solution, denying Israel’s right to exist entirely. At the end of August 2024, Mofokeng had tweeted the slogan “from the river to the sea” alongside a map erasing Israel.

Last year, Mofokeng had been found guilty of “abusive social media posts and unprofessional conduct” by the Health Professions Council of South Africa. She had launched a racist tirade against UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, calling him “evil scum” and “white man”, among other examples of misconduct.

Overall, the report identifies a key trend in the UN’s enabling of unfit figures in the organisation, highlighting an underlying inability to serve its stated aim and purpose of universal impartiality.