Francesca Albanese
Francesca Paola Albanese is an Italian legal scholar and expert on human rights who has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories since 1 May 2022; initially appointed for a three-year term, Albanese was confirmed for another three years in April 2025. She is the first woman to hold the position.
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. She was an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University until late 2025, when the University stated it was ended due to U.S. sanctions imposed on her. She is a senior advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement at the non-profit Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development.
As part of her current position as a UN special 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 occupation and apartheid. After the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, Albanese called for an immediate ceasefire and warned that Palestinians in Gaza were at risk of ethnic cleansing. On 26 March 2024 Albanese reported to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.
Pro-Israel organizations have accused Albanese of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. Several human rights groups and numerous scholars of antisemitism have said the accusations are illegitimate attempts to discredit her.
The UN published a report by Albanese in June 2025 stating that corporate entities were enabling and profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories and the Gaza genocide. The report lists 48 corporations, including Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. and Amazon, which it states are helping Israel displace Palestinians in breach of international law. In response the United States Department of the Treasury under the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Albanese under Executive Order 14203 naming her a "specially designated national", thus forbidding all U.S. persons and companies from doing business with her.
Early and personal life
Francesca Paola Albanese was born in Ariano Irpino, a town in the Campania region of southern Italy. She is married to Massimiliano Calì, a World Bank official who has worked at the World Bank since 2012. The couple have two children. she lives in Tunis, Tunisia.Career
Albanese holds a full Italian law degree, with honours from the University of Pisa and a Master of Laws in human rights from SOAS University of London. She was an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University until late 2025, when the University stated it was ended as a result of U.S. sanctions imposed on her. She is a senior advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement at the non-profit Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development. 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, 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 a May 2025 interview, Albanese said that she had studied jurisprudence and had not taken the bar examination because she was more interested in human rights and did not want to practice law in Italy.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
Albanese was the second Italian 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 said the United States was "subjugated by the Jewish lobby", which she later said she regretted, and Europe by a "sense of guilt about the Holocaust", and that both "condemn the oppressed – the Palestinians" in the conflict. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Michele Taylor, the American ambassador to the Human Rights Council, suggested the comments were antisemitic. Albanese said that she had 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 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.
In August 2024 she was one of many UN Special Rapporteurs who signed an open letter to the "International community" on the third anniversary of the Taliban taking change in Afghanistan. They were concerned that the regime's human-rights abuses particularly against women and girls may become accepted. They encouraged the International Criminal Court to take urgent action against those responsible.
Gaza war
In 2023 after the outbreak of the Gaza 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 October 7 attacks 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 26 March 2024 Albanese presented the report "Anatomy of a Genocide" before the 55th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, 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:
- "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.
During a briefing on the international legal responsibilities for preventing genocide, Albanese said that, given the way Israel is currently behaving, it is time to consider suspending their credential as a Member State, under Article 6 of the Charter of the United Nations".
In an interview with the Middle East Eye in November 2024, Albanese described Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom David Lammy as a genocide denier, and stated that the British government has done nothing to prevent Israel's atrocities in Gaza.
In March 2025 Betar, a Jewish far-right organization, threatened Albanese with a pager attack during her visit to London. The group posted a statement on Twitter that said "Join us to give Francesca a in London on Tuesday." The pager emoji is a reference to the 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon. Albanese said that she and her family had received death threats.
File:Conferencia emergencia Palestina-Joel González 21.jpg|thumb|Albanese, Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour and Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the Emergency Conference on Palestine in Bogota, Colombia, 16 July 2025
Albanese criticized the Trump administration for welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States and maintaining friendly relations with him, despite the fact that an arrest warrant has been issued for Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court.
In June 2025, Albanese said Israel had killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists because they were documenting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. She also said EU officials like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas were complicit in Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
The UN published a report by Albanese in June 2025 stating that the Gaza genocide was continuing because it is lucrative for several business corporations. The report lists 48 corporations, including Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. and Amazon, which it says are helping Israel displace Palestinians in breach of international law.