Francesca Albanese

Francesca P. Albanese (born 1977) is an Italian international lawyer and academic. On 1 May 2022, she was appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories for a three-year term. She is the first woman to hold the position.

Albanese was born in Ariano Irpino, Italy in 1977. She holds a law degree with honours from the University of Pisa and a Master of Laws in human rights from SOAS University of London, and is completing her PhD in International Refugee Law at the Law Faculty of Amsterdam University. She is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement at the non-profit Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

As part of her current position as UN rapporteur, Albanese has been critical of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and recommended in her first report that UN member states develop a plan to end the "Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime". After the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, Albanese called for an immediate ceasefire and warned that Palestinians in Gaza were at risk of "mass ethnic cleansing." On 26 March 2024, Albanese reported to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.

There has been international attention and controversy surrounding Albanese's appointment and tenure as Special Rapporteur. France, Germany, the United States, and Israel, and some organizations, have accused Albanese of bias against Israel, with some allegations citing antisemitism. Human rights groups and scholars have said the accusations are illegitimate attempts to discredit her for her criticism of Israel.

Career
Albanese holds a law degree with honours from the University of Pisa and a Master of Laws in human rights from SOAS University of London, and she is completing her PhD in International Refugee Law at the Law Faculty of Amsterdam University. She is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement at the non-profit Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Widely published, she co-founded at ARDD the Global Network on the Question of Palestine. In 2020, she and Lex Takkenberg wrote the Oxford University Press-published Palestinian Refugees in International Law.

Albanese worked for a decade as a human rights expert for the United Nations (UN), including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees. During this period, she advised the UN, governments, and civil society in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asia Pacific regions on human rights and their application and norms, particularly for vulnerable groups like refugees and migrants.

She holds lectures on international law and forced displacement in both European and Arab universities, as well as conferences and public events about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In April 2023, Albanese received the International Stefano Chiarini Award (Premio Internazionale Stefano Chiarini) in recognition of journalistic work covering Palestine and the Middle East.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
Albanese was the second Italian (after Giorgio Giacomelli) and the first woman to be appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Her appointment generated some controversy due to comments she made criticising the US and Europe during the 2014 Gaza War. Albanese described the United States as "subjugated by the Jewish lobby" and Europe by a "sense of guilt about the Holocaust", arguing that both "condemn the oppressed" in the conflict. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Susan Heller Pinto of the Anti-Defamation League, and Michele Taylor, the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council, suggested the comments were antisemitic in nature. She said that she has never been antisemitic and that her criticism of Israel is related to its occupation of Palestinian territories.

On 18 October 2022, Albanese recommended in her first report that UN member states develop "a plan to end the Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid regime". The report concluded: "The violations described in the present report expose the nature of the Israeli occupation, that of an intentionally acquisitive, segregationist and repressive regime designed to prevent the realization of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination."

In December 2022, sixty-five scholars of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Jewish studies stated: "It is evident that the campaign against [Albanese] is not about combating today's antisemitism. It is essentially about efforts to silence her and to undermine her mandate as a senior UN official reporting about Israel's violations of human rights and international law."

In January 2023, a statement was issued in defence of Albanese by a number of human rights organizations, academic institutions, and other civil society organizations. The statement concluded by stating: "We commend UNSR Francesca Albanese’s tireless efforts toward the protection of human rights in the OPT and in raising awareness of the alarming daily violations of Palestinian rights. We call on third States to strongly condemn this politically-motivated attack on the Special Rapporteur's mandate and to compel Israel to comply with its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations."

In February 2023, a bipartisan group of 18 members of the United States Congress called for Albanese to be removed from her position saying that she has demonstrated a consistent bias against Israel.

Amid continuing efforts to have Albanese removed from her post, on 26 April, Amnesty International Italy published a letter of support signed by dozens of Italian rights groups, MPs, jurists and academics. On 27 April, three former holders of the position publicly urged the UN to defend Albanese and said that she has been "the target of attacks that have been 'slanderous' and 'personal'". On 3 May, Albanese tweeted that she "saw too many deaths [of Palestinians], too much arbitrariness, zero accountability" and faced accusations for her work in addressing these abuses.

In July 2023, during the 30th Meeting of the 53rd Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council, Albanese presented a report accusing Israel of turning the West Bank into an open-air prison. The report said that since 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, had been arrested and detained by Israeli authorities. Briefing journalists, Albanese said "There is no other way to define the regime that Israel has imposed on the Palestinians – which is apartheid by default – other than an open-air prison." Israel was not present for the presentation but rejected the findings.

2023–24 Israel–Hamas War
During the Israel–Hamas War, Albanese called for an immediate ceasefire, warning that "Palestinians are in grave danger of a mass ethnic cleansing." She further stated that the international community must "prevent and protect populations from atrocity crimes", and that "accountability for international crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces and Hamas must also be immediately pursued."

In February 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron described the 7 October attack as "the largest antisemitic massacre of our century". Albanese responded on Twitter that "the victims of the October 7 massacre were killed not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israeli oppression". The French Foreign Ministry condemned her remarks and the Israeli government declared Albanese persona non grata in Israel and denied her future entry to the country. In response to the reactions, Albanese said "I regret that some interpreted my tweet as 'justifying' Hamas's crimes, which I have condemned strongly several times. I reject all forms of racism, including antisemitism. However, labeling these crimes as 'antisemitic' obscures the real reason they occurred".

On March 26, 2024 Albanese, presented before the 55th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva her report "Anatomy of a Genocide", stating "reasonable grounds" to believe that Israel is intentionally committing at least three "genocidal acts" against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza proscribed in the Genocide Convention: She called for sanctions and an arms embargo. She was one of the many UN experts who spoke out against the sale of arms to Israel in June 2024 to be used in the conflict in Gaza. The experts cautioned arms suppliers and finance companies that they would be implicated in human rights violations. The signatories to the warning included special reporteurs Paula Gaviria Betancur, Tlaleng Mofokeng and Margaret Satterthwaite.
 * "Killing Members of the Group";
 * "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group";
 * "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part".

Further Albanese points to the settler colonial context of genocidal practices resulting in "destruction and replacement of Indigenous peoples" and recommends the "reconstitution of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid" to address the situation in Palestine.

In July 2024, following an allegation in June by UN Watch that Albanese accepted illegal payments from pro-Hamas groups for a trip abroad, the matter was forwarded to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk for "attention and appropriate action".

Personal life
Albanese was born in Ariano Irpino, Campania. She is married to Massimiliano Calì, a World Bank official since 2012 who briefly worked at the United Nations Development Programme in 2011. The couple has two children.