The plural professional: How UN human rights experts construct their independence
Alvina Hoffmann discusses the key arguments from her new Review of International Studies (RIS) article. If you'd like to know more you can read the full article here - The plural professional: How UN human rights experts construct their independence.
In a speech to the honour society Pi Lambda Theta at Columbia University in 1949, Eleanor Roosevelt, then chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and one of the architects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, distinguished democracies, such as her United States, from communist regimes such as the USSR. Democracies allowed ‘inspection’ of their human rights record by external actors. In democracies, she argued, ‘it is very easy to find out what actually goes on’.
It was not until 1967 that the United Nations put in place institutional provisions for such independent experts on human rights, first on apartheid and racial discrimination in Southern Africa until 1995, and in 1968 on Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories still in place today. Neither country allowed experts to enter their territories to inspect their human rights record. Nonetheless, these first ad hoc working groups would set in motion the creation of what today has become known as the ‘special procedures’ system in the United Nations. My article provides the first systematic analysis of these human rights experts that have become appointed as special rapporteurs on a variety of global thematic and country-specific issues. It does so by developing the concept of the plural professional and through an original biographical database of 122 thematic special rapporteurs.
On threatening letters and diplomatic immunity On 9 July 2025, this expert body made headlines when the United States imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. As she stated, the United Nations remains ‘totally unable to intervene’ in Gaza. She made these remarks in the context of a serious attack against her mandate, and the system of special procedures as a whole.
The USA took the unprecedented step due to her direct engagement with the International Criminal Court “in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel”. Rubio’s press statement described Albanese’s “threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies” as an escalation of her strategies. These sanctions were framed as preventing “illegitimate ICC overreach and abuse of power” and as part of Trump’s Executive Order 14203 on imposing sanctions on the ICC. It was Albanese’s most recent report to the UN Human Rights Council from 30 June which led to these extreme measures which focused on the role of the corporate sector in ‘colonial endeavours and associated genocides’ and naming over 60 companies by name. A host of institutions and actors have run to her defence. Agnes Callamard, a former special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and Secretary General of Amnesty international noted the ‘chilling effects for all special rapporteurs’. Top UN human rights officials denounced this
dangerous precedent and called for its reversal. In February 2024, Albanese was declared persona non grata in response to remarks on the October 7. De facto, Albanese, like most previous independent experts on the Occupied Territories, was already barred from entering the territory. As with the newly imposed sanctions, she called this step a distraction and called upon the world to keep their focus on Gaza.
Attacks against individual rapporteurs provide an opportunity for all experts to come together as one body to condemn attacks on one as an attack on all. Special rapporteurs are granted diplomatic immunity which, in theory, should enable them to speak up or write critical reports without the fear of reprisals. However, in 1989 and 1999 the World Court had to intervene with an advisory opinion on two cases when this status was jeopardised after the home countries of two special rapporteurs tried to restrict their freedom of speech.
This example illustrates one of my key findings: Special rapporteurs occupy an ambiguous institutional position, taking their mandate from the Human Rights Council but acting in their personal capacity, and hence not considered UN officials. In practice, they need to balance relations carefully between the UN Secretariat, civil society, state representatives and, at times, their own states. The advisory opinions helped clarify that it was the Secretary-General as the head of the organisation that entrusts them with these privileges of diplomatic immunity.
Special rapporteurs as plural professionals
Special rapporteurs appear to be quite unusual human rights actors due to this ambiguous position in relation to the UN. At the same time, they are part of a familiar class of actors in international relations where independent expertise on global issues is in high demand. As many transnational professionals, they seem to move seamlessly between professional settings. But not only this: They also practice several professions at once.
Existing scholarship on transnational professionals tends to neglect this in favour of theorising their mobility across occupational settings. This under-theorised characteristic of independent experts highlights the need for a different approach to expert independence. To this end, I have developed the concept of ‘plural professional’, bringing Bernard Lahire’s sociology of the individual to bear on the study of expert bodies. By practising several professions at the same time, I show how over the course of their career, a plural professional can embody very different professional dispositions at the same time, as expressed in their skill sets and worldviews. This can create tensions, even contradictions in how they approach their work and independent status.
For example, as my biographic dataset shows, UN human rights experts come from professional settings that span academia, civil society advocacy, litigation, international organisations, diplomacy, and other professional fields such as medicine. This heterogeneous body can exercise a diverse set of strategies depending on the skills they
master and believe to be the most effective ones. Paired with their ambiguous status at the UN, this allows them to construct their independence in a transnational social space.
This analysis has consequences for how we understand independence. It shows how independence is a situated, socio-historical category which emerges through the combination of different types of biographical, professional, and institutional resources which ‘plural professionals’ mobilise. As social contexts interact with plural professional identities, different professional dispositions can come to the fore while others may remain dormant or become annihilated.
One particularly vivid example of annihilation was offered by a human rights expert who studied law and was appointed a judge in the Soviet Union. Feelings that something ‘was not right’ were substantiated by a trip to Western Germany in 1989. As the Soviet Union fell apart, he looked into opportunities to re-educate himself and learnt about human rights at the Central European University in 1992 and later in the USA. He became a ‘fanatic of human rights’ which has influenced his lawyering since then.
The constitution of independence among experts varies across contexts as different resources interplay in historically specific ways. This influences how experts experience their independence. In the article, I distinguish individualist and collective/interconnective understandings of independence, which also informs the types of strategies human rights experts develop: Working as a collective and forming alliances, or working alone and sometimes against the grain.
Conclusion
Despite some of the differences, there is something that unites all of these experts: a faith in the instruments of human rights law to address issues of humanitarian concern. In fact, as Francesca Albanese stated poignantly during a public talk at SOAS University of London in November 2024 – one of many talks given in universities around the world – we are yet to unlock the full potential of these instruments. This can only be done as a collective.
Want to know more? You can read the full article at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525000117
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