Qatari UN Ambassador Hend Al-Muftah faces backlash over homophobic tweets

Watchdog organisation UN Watch sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Council President expressing “grave concern” about the tweets from Hend Al-Muftah.

Qatari UN Ambassador Hend Al-Muftah

Qatar’s envoy to the United Nations, Hend Al-Muftah has deleted her Twitter account after homophobic and antisemitic tweets from her account were discovered. It was reported that a letter was sent to the UN Human Rights Council President Federico Villegas after Muftah had been nominated to sit on the UN Forum on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law.

The letter sent to Federico Villegas detailed the content of dozens of Muftah’s tweets over the past decade. The letter stated that the Qatari Ambassador “has a long record of publishing racist tropes about Jews, bigoted attacks on gays, and disinformation and conspiracy theories about Western societies and liberalism,”

In the now-deleted tweets, Hend Al-Muftah referred to Jewish people as “our enemies” and called for “God’s curse” against gay men. Another tweet stated that “Defending human rights has nothing to do with gay rights!”

In a reply to a headline regarding former Vice President Dick Cheney’s gay daughter’s wedding, Muftah wrote that “the West celebrates the lack of reason… and the decay of morals.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, the litany of tweets also recommended a book entitled “The Great Conspiracy” by Dr Mustafa Mahmoud which argues that Jewish people are infecting Western society with “obscenity and decadence, cocaine, crack, nudity, sex and violence.”

The discovery of these social media posts eventually caused the Qatari Ambassador to lose her bid to become chair of the UN Forum on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. The president of the UN Human Rights Council, Frederico Villegas has announced that Bahamas representative Patricia Hermanns would fill the role instead.

UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer shared his thoughts about the controversy to his followers on social media, referring to Muftah as “Qatar’s Ambassador of Hate.”


Qatar has been the epicentre of controversy since it was announced that it would host the 2022 World Cup in November. In the past few months many concerns, particularly for workers’ and LGBTQ+ rights in Qatar, have been the topic of discussion in global news.

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