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A Canadian international human rights law scholar, Anne Bayefsky is closely associated with the pro-Israel Right in the United States and internationally. Her writing, which often appears in rightist and neoconservative journals like the Weekly Standard and the National Review, often focuses on issues such as the "moral depravity" of the United Nations and the need to take a hardline stance against "enemy" states in the Middle East like Iran and Syria.

In 1995 Bayefsky received a grant from the highly regarded and generally liberal-leaning MacArthur Foundation to investigate issues related to peace and international cooperation. Bayefsky supports the work of a number of rightist policy groups, including the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a neoconservative-aligned research organization where she serves as a senior fellow; UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization largely devoted to criticizing what it views as an unfair bias against Israel at the United Nations; and the Israel-based Ariel Center for Policy Research, a Likud Party-affiliated organization that supports the work of hardline writers in the Middle East, North America, and Europe.

In an April 2007 Weekly Standard article, Bayefsky excoriated U.S. congressman like Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) for pushing for a stronger diplomatic effort at the United Nations. She wrote: "Congressman Lantos and his close friend former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan have long been drinking from the same well. The 'reformed' Human Rights Council was Annan's creation. Lantos is the leading advocate of the United States joining the Human Rights Council—where presumably we could jump up and down while exercising one vote out of 47. Annan, of his own volition, went to Tehran last September and urged the world not to isolate Iran immediately after the Iranian president had ignored a Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear activities. Lantos confessed to the House Committee at the end of February that he has been begging for a visa to go to Iran for the past ten years and 'will be among the first ones to do so once this visa is granted.' Lantos was pleased with his recent trip, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA], to Syria . The UN shares his view that one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism ought to be a welcome player on the world stage. Following the election on Monday of Iran as vice chairman, the UN Disarmament Commission elected Syria as its rapporteur. The line between UN diplomacy and farce has been crossed. The real tragedy is that the defensible border between our freedom-loving rights-respecting world and the cave of our enemies is fading along with it."

In May 2006, Bayefsky published in the National Review Online a scornful critique of what she termed the UN's "depravity and deceit in combating terrorism." She highlighted the work of Louise Arbour, the UN commissioner for human rights, who in May 2006 issued what Bayefsky called a "stupefying press release" in which the human rights commissioner pledged to make the parties in the Israel-Palestinian conflict "stop this new round of violence." Arbour said in her press release: "The rising number of lives lost, whether as a result of targeted killings or suicide attacks, home-made missiles, or artillery fire, is unacceptable." According to Bayefsky, the "moral depravity" of the press release, which she argued failed to "distinguish between suicide bombing and targeting the would-be bombers or their masters," was endemic to the United Nations. After highlighting a number of similarly objectionable UN actions vis-à-vis the Mideast conflict, Bayefsky concluded: "UN depravity and deceit in combating terrorism ought to send a clear signal to both President [George W.] Bush and Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert: Solutions to their common problems do not lie through the UN. Not through praying for a serious UN Security Council resolution on Iran . Not through hoping that the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) will save Palestinians from the consequences of having empowered killers and racists as their representatives. Not through imagining the Middle East Quartet will drive fair and balanced negotiations. UN-led multilateralism is neither a substitute for leadership, nor a vehicle for winning the war."

In January 2003, Bayefsky launched her website, www.bayefsky.com, a compendium of resources related to the UN human rights system and treaty bodies. The website, which has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations, "was designed for the purpose of enhancing the implementation of the human rights legal standards of the United Nations. Accessibility to UN human rights norms by individuals everywhere is fundamental to their successful realization."

Bayefsky is the author or editor of a number of books, including How to Complain to the UN Human Rights Treaty System (Kluwer Law International and Transnational Publishers, 2002); The UN Human Rights Treaty System: Universality at the Crossroads (Kluwer Law International and Transnational Publishers, 2001); The UN Human Rights Treaty System in the Twenty-First Century (Kluwer Law International, 2000); Human Rights and Forced Displacement (Martinus Nijhoff, 2000); and Self-Determination in International Law: Quebec and Lessons Learned (Kluwer Law International, 2000).