The UN Special Rapporteur has been approved by the US for her work as an independent investigator scrutinizing human rights abuses on Palestinian territory, with Washington denounces what it calls a “political and economic warfare campaign” against the US and Israel.
Francesca Albanese is a well-known member of a group of experts selected by the 47 UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. They report to the body as a means of monitoring human rights records from different countries and as a means of global compliance with certain rights.
The Special Rapporteur does not represent the United Nations and does not have formal authority. Still, their reports can intensify pressure on the country, and their findings inform the International Criminal Court and prosecutors at other venues working on cross-border justice cases.
In a statement Wednesday announcing sanctions against Albanese, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said she “spewing unabashed anti-Semitism, expressing support for terrorism, and publicly open humiliated the United States, Israel and the West.”
Albanese said Thursday that she believes sanctions were “calculated to undermine my mission.” She said at a press conference in Slovenia, “I will continue to do what I have to do.”
She questioned why she was approved – “For revealing genocide? For blaming the system? They never challenged me with the facts.”
Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for a “quick reversal” of US sanctions. He added: “Even in the face of intense discrepancies, UN Member States should engage substantially and constructively, rather than resort to punitive measures.”
Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has achieved a very well-known achievement as a special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza that she has been holding since May 2022.
Last week, she nominated several large companies among Israeli supporters fighting the war with Hamas in Gaza, and her report “shows why the Israeli massacre continues, because it's an advantage for many.”
Israel has long had fierce relationships with the Human Rights Council, the Albaneseans and previous rapporteurs, accusing them of being biased. It refused to cooperate with a special “investigation committee” established following the 2021 conflict with Hamas.
Albanese has spoken out about what he describes as an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel and the United States provide military support to its close allies and strongly denies the accusation.
Over the past few weeks, Albanese has issued a series of letters urging other countries to pressure Israel, including sanctions, and end deadly bombardment in the Gaza Strip. She was also a strong supporter of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for alleged war crimes.
At a press conference last year, Albanese said she has been “always being attacked since the beginning of my mission,” adding that criticism would not force her to step down.
“It just makes me mad and it makes me mad, of course it makes me mad, but it puts more pressure on me not to back down,” she said. “The work of human rights is amplifying the voices of people who are not heard first and foremost.”
She added, “Of course, they blamed Hamas – why not blame Hamas? But at the same time there is nothing that justifies what Israel is doing.”
Albanese became an affiliate scholar at Georgetown University in 2015 at the Institute of International Migration, and in recent years he taught and spoke at various universities in Europe and the Middle East. She also writes publications and opinions on issues of Palestine.
According to a biographer on the Georgetown website, Albanese worked for UN arms between 2003 and 2013, including the UN Arms Division, UNRWA and the UN Human Rights Office.
She was in Washington between 2013 and 2015, working for Project Cancern International, a non-governmental organization in the US, as an advisor on conservation issues during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Albanese is one of 13 experts appointed to the current council on a particular country and territory.
Special Rapporteurs documenting rights violations and abuse usually have a year of renewable obligation and often work without the assistance of the state under investigation. There are rapporteurs from Afghanistan, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar and Russia. One regarding Syria is to take office once the mandate of the long-standing committee of inquiry on the country is finished.
There are also three country-specific “independent experts” who have a more focused role in the Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia.
Additionally, there are dozens of “theme obligations” that make experts and working groups a task to analyze phenomena related to specific human rights. These include special rapporteurs regarding “torturing and other cruelty, inhuman or degraded treatment or punishment,” the human rights of immigrants, the exclusion of discrimination against those affected by leprosy, child sales, sexual abuse, and sexual abuse.