A U.N. particular rapporteur has been sanctioned by the USA over her work as an impartial investigator scrutinizing human rights abuses within the Palestinian territories, with Washington decrying what it referred to as a “marketing campaign of political and financial warfare” in opposition to the U.S. and Israel.
Francesca Albanese is a high-profile member of a bunch of specialists chosen by the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. They report back to the physique as a method of monitoring human rights information in varied international locations and the worldwide observance of particular rights.
Particular rapporteurs do not signify the U.N. and don’t have any formal authority. Nonetheless, their stories can step up strain on international locations, whereas their findings inform prosecutors on the Worldwide Felony Courtroom and different venues engaged on transnational justice circumstances.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in an announcement saying sanctions in opposition to Albanese on Wednesday that she “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed help for terrorism, and open contempt for the USA, Israel and the West.”
Albanese stated Thursday that she believed the sanctions have been “calculated to weaken my mission.” She stated at a information convention in Slovenia that “I’ll proceed to do what I’ve to do.”
She questioned why she had been sanctioned — “for having uncovered a genocide? For having denounced the system? They by no means challenged me on the info.”
The U.N. excessive commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, referred to as for a “immediate reversal” of the U.S. sanctions. He added that “even in face of fierce disagreement, U.N. member states ought to interact substantively and constructively, reasonably than resort to punitive measures.”
Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has developed an unusually excessive profile because the particular rapporteur for the West Financial institution and Gaza, a publish she has held since Might 2022.
Final week, she named a number of giant U.S. corporations amongst these aiding Israel because it fights a warfare with Hamas in Gaza, saying her report “reveals why Israel’s genocide continues: as a result of it’s profitable for a lot of.”
Israel has lengthy had a rocky relationship with the Human Rights Council, Albanese and former rapporteurs, accusing them of bias. It has refused to cooperate with a particular “Fee of Inquiry” established following a 2021 battle with Hamas.
Albanese has been vocal about what she describes as a genocide by Israel in opposition to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel and the U.S., which offers army help to its shut ally, have strongly denied the accusation.
In latest weeks, Albanese issued a collection of letters urging different international locations to strain Israel, together with by way of sanctions, to finish its lethal bombardment of the Gaza Strip. She additionally has been a robust supporter of arrest warrants issued by the Worldwide Felony Courtroom in opposition to Israeli officers, together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegations of warfare crimes.
Albanese stated at a information convention final yr that she has “at all times been attacked for the reason that very starting of my mandate,” including that criticism would not drive her to step down.
“It simply infuriates me, it pisses me off, in fact it does, however then it creates much more strain to not step again,” she stated. “Human rights work is at the start amplifying the voice of people who find themselves not heard.”
She added that “in fact, one condemned Hamas — how to not condemn Hamas? However on the identical time, nothing justifies what Israel is doing.”
Albanese grew to become an affiliate scholar on the Institute for the Research of Worldwide Migration at Georgetown College in 2015, and has taught and lectured lately at varied universities in Europe and the Center East. She additionally has written publications and opinions on Palestinian points.
Albanese labored between 2003 and 2013 with arms of the U.N., together with the authorized affairs division of the U.N. Palestinian help company, UNRWA, and the U.N. human rights workplace, in accordance with her biography on the Georgetown web site.
She was in Washington between 2013 and 2015 and labored for an American nongovernmental group, Challenge Concern Worldwide, as an adviser on safety points throughout an Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Albanese is one in every of 13 present council-appointed specialists on particular international locations and territories.
Particular rapporteurs, who doc rights violations and abuses, often have renewable mandates of 1 yr and sometimes work with out the help of the nation below investigation. There are rapporteurs for Afghanistan, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar and Russia. One on Syria is meant to take workplace as soon as the mandate of a long-serving fee of inquiry on the nation ends.
There are also three country-specific “impartial specialists,” a job extra centered on technical help, for the Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia.
Moreover, there are a number of dozen “thematic mandates,” which activity specialists or working teams to investigate phenomena associated to specific human rights. These embody particular rapporteurs on “torture and different merciless, inhuman or degrading therapy or punishment,” the human rights of migrants, the elimination of discrimination in opposition to individuals affected by leprosy and the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of youngsters.
