U.N. “human rights” experts are taking six-figure donations from leftist nonprofit groups without properly disclosing them all, a watchdog group alleges.
Research unveiled by the Geneva-based UN Watch on Monday traced funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation to current and former U.N. special rapporteurs. The watchdog raised concerns that such influence could compromise the rapporteurs, who the U.N. appoints as independent experts to monitor human rights abuses in specific territories.
“These arrangements allow politically engaged foundations to support UN agendas through financial relationships that governments and the public cannot adequately scrutinize,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Independence requires more than an unpaid job title.”
Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the United Nations did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
The U.N. experts have taken $4.7 million combined in Open Society Foundations grants, ranging from $1,600 to $829,981 per individual recipient, UN Watch found. Some rapporteurs did not properly report six-figure amounts from Open Society Foundations as the money passed through entities personally tied to them, UN Watch said.
Soros passed down his philanthropic and political empire to his son, Alex, in 2025. The family directs millions of dollars toward leftist initiatives, sparking criticism in the United States, most famously for helping to elect lenient prosecutors.
Another $11.1 million to the U.N. experts came from the Ford Foundation, according to UN Watch’s research. The foundation’s history of left-wing projects includes funding protests and other activities that occasionally turned violent, the Washington Examiner previously reported.
In September 2025, Trump administration officials named the Open Society and Ford groups as possibly abusing their tax-exempt status in a podcast interview and a Department of Justice directive obtained by The New York Times.
“Protesters get paid for their profession from Soros and other people,” President Donald Trump said in a September 2025 interview, Bloomberg reported. The Ford and Open Society foundations have denied supporting illegal activity.
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UN Watch advocated several reforms on Monday to address the spending, including increasing oversight of special rapporteurs and “a complete ban on earmarked funding from governments or other external entities.”
“Democracies must insist that those who investigate others meet basic standards of transparency, impartiality and accountability themselves,” Neuer said.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
