The UN Human Rights Council is set to appoint an academic who has appeared to defend Hamas to a special rapporteur position, against the recommendation of its own vetting group, according to the nonprofit group UN Watch.

Special rapporteurs are independent experts assigned to report on particular subject fields for the council. Once appointed, they are given resources, a prominent platform and UN authority to espouse their views, but are largely free of oversight.

A UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) consultative group recommended an academic from Spain, Clara Portela, as its top pick for the special rapporteur on “unilateral coercive measures.”

The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner defines the field as “economic and political measures imposed by one or a group of States to coerce another State into subordination.”

The group’s second pick was Zeina Jallad, a Palestinian scholar at the American University of Beirut.

The UNHRC’s Office of the President has bypassed Portela, however, in favor of Jallad, citing Jallad’s “practice-grounded perspective and vision for the implementation of the mandate.”

The president’s pick is typically approved by the UNHRC. The vote will take place on March 31.

Jallad, from Ramallah, is a graduate of Columbia Law School and is the director of the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut, according to her application. She has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Birzeit and Al-Quds universities.

Jallad has a history of defending the Hamas terrorist group.

In March 2025, Jallad said Hamas is a “political party. Hamas, in its charter, recognized Israel.” Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

She has also referred to Hamas as a “resistance movement”; said separately that “resisting oppression must be recognized not as a crime”; called to suspend Israel from international organizations as a “means to uphold justice”; said Israel’s creation was “the product of the wrongdoings of the West” and a “product of Europe“; and accused Isarel of settler-colonialism and apartheid.

Special rapporteurs whose fields are nominally unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have also used their platform to denigrate Israel, such as Michael Fakhri, the special rapporteur on the right to food.

Jallad is a legal adviser for Fakhri. She is also a legal adviser at UN Women and a “gender expert” for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, according to UN Watch.

The UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, overwhelmingly targets Israel in its condemnations, like the UN General Assembly.

The most widely known UN special rapporteur is likely Francesca Albanese, the rapporteur for the Palestinians.

Albanese has repeatedly been charged with antisemitism, bias and making inflammatory statements against Israel, including by European governments and the US.

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