UN Expert Sanctioned By Trump, Celebrated By Slovenia: A Pattern of Discomfort
Newsweek highlights Slovenia's leader suggesting a Nobel Peace Prize for Agnès Callamard, a UN expert sanctioned by the Trump administration. The underlying current Newsweek ignores, or perhaps politely sidesteps, is why Callamard earned such ire. She was sanctioned by the US for her tenacious work, including investigating the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and criticizing states for human rights
violations – inconvenient truths that often rub powerful governments, including the US and its allies, the wrong way. The US government’s discomfort with independent human rights accountability is a consistent theme. Callamard’s ‘sanctioning’ by Trump and subsequent praise from a lesser power isn't about her specific individual brilliance (though she has it), but about how often those who
genuinely challenge power structures find themselves in direct opposition to establishment interests. It poses the uncomfortable question: If a human rights expert is inconvenient enough to be sanctioned by one administration, what does that say about the values underpinning that administration's foreign policy?