Francesca Albanese says it's Time for Change

The mandate that Albanese assumed in 2022 sits at the nexus of extreme violations of human rights in Palestine, the complicity of western states, and, despite these realities, allegations of censorship and media bias in favour of Israel. Within the first 15 months of Israel’s assault on Gaza following October 7th alone, roughly 3–4% of the population of Gaza was killed. Moreover, they were killed by military personnel, some of whom had been trained in Britain, using attack and transport helicopters and combat-capable aircraft of US origin. Albanese’s response has been to lend her institutional credibility, born of her appointment by the United Nations Human Rights Council and her academic career, and to give voice, in simple, jargon-free language, to a deep malaise. A leading refugee law scholar, to whom I mentioned I was interviewing Albanese, summarised it neatly: people find Albanese “electrifying”.

When I speak to Albanese, her husband is driving her and her children to the beach in Sicily, where she’s from. Her answers are interspersed with “Max, shut the boot”, “I’m doing an interview, I’ll come soon”, and “Yes, the heat is unbearable”. She tells me this is just one of 1,500 interviews she’s done in the last three years, an average of one and a half interviews a day. I put it to her that it’s a measure of the public interest in her. “It’s a rewarding experience to be loved by the people,” she says. “I am so much loved by the people and hated by the many, many governments connected to Israel’s apartheid. But I think, numbers-wise, I’m on the safe side.”

Her fame, of course, has come at a personal cost. After the publication of her report Anatomy of a Genocide, the cadence of the death threats she had become used to quickened to intolerable levels. An anonymous caller told Albanese that her daughter would be raped, identifying the school she attends. “My own life has become scary at times, incredibly painful,” she tells me. “Now, for me, when you say luxury, I think of health, and I think of time with my family and friends. A normal dinner, a meal prepared by me and my husband for my kids. This is luxury for me, and it’s not rhetorical.”

It’s a tough gig. One of Albanese’s predecessors, Richard Falk, was detained by Israeli authorities and subjected to an “extensive body search” while attempting to enter Palestine in 2008. No special rapporteur has had access to Palestine since, including Albanese, prompting one of her predecessors, Makarim Wibisono, to resign just two years into his mandate. And then there’s the fact that Albanese is the first woman to serve in her role. “I’ve been waiting to write my memoir about what I experienced as special rapporteur,” she says. “We tend to say that Arab leaders are chauvinists and that, in Arab countries, women are not respected. For sure, there is more written in constitutions on freedoms and rights for women in the West, even if not cast in stone. But I can tell you about the outrageous behaviour I’ve registered, especially in my own country, Italy, and in France as well. I remember an ambassador jumping onto an online meeting while still buckling his belt, and then he said, almost verbatim: ‘Tell me about your credentials for this post.’ And I said: ‘Excuse me? Ambassador, are we having this meeting for you to check what your colleagues at the Human Rights Council have already done?’ Another was saying: ‘I know how knowledgeable you are because I’ve written extensively about Palestinians’ displacement in the Arab region,’ and the one-hour meeting passed with me being lectured. I don’t think it’s been the same for my male predecessors.”

Albanese has not been able to escape the double bind of media attention on her appearance, either. She’s either too fashion-forward and therefore, presumably, self-interested (“the look of someone who’s just stepped off a stage, more protagonist than observer”) or a try-hard hippy (“radical-chic look, radical-chic sneer, and radical-chic arrogance”). “It’s clear that I have my own style, I take care of myself, I always have a curated appearance,” she says. “And people say, ‘She pretends to work for Palestine, but look at how much time she spends on her hair or her glasses.’” They claim that I am fake because I cannot defend Palestine and also be elegant. On the other hand, they are derogatory about my style, commenting on my silver hair, my square glasses, my jewellery, and my clothes. But why don’t they ever, ever engage with the findings of my work? Even Corriere della Sera, which is the principal newspaper in Italy, one of those legacy media outlets, talks like this. I’m not talking about those that are naturally considered partisan or ill-informed. I’m talking about newspapers that may influence public opinion.”

Albanese tells me that, when set up at the local lido this summer to write her annual reports to the UN General Assembly, a client got into an argument with the manager for serving her. Though the manager sided with Albanese, it was little comfort as she sat behind her laptop while her children played on the beach. Given the ramifications for her security and the impact on her personal life, does she ever think of stopping? “I remember when I was in the US and I was part of the yoga community,” she says. “And I remember going around with my daughter’s stroller and I would see people sleeping in the street. And then you see people with their yoga mats talking about ahimsa, nonviolence, and just crossing over someone sleeping in front of their yoga studio. I’ve never got used to this. This is why, for people like me, this world is not an easy place. Once you know, you cannot unknow. Once you see, you cannot unsee.”

Personal responsibility is a theme that recurs in Albanese’s speeches and writings. “I have understanding and empathy for people who do not know,” she says. “But the thing is that once you know, you cannot pretend not to know or not to be concerned.” Special rapporteurs are appointed to report to the UN General Assembly. Albanese’s reports are addressed to the UN General Assembly, yes, but she’s also calling upon us, the general public, to take action. A frequent refrain of hers is that Gaza is a “crime scene” with “all of our fingerprints on it”, from “what we buy, where we put our savings, where our pensions come from, and the technology we use”.

“Through reading the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement] guidelines, I got to know how interconnected we are in this production, consumption, destruction, non-reproduction environment,” she says, “which is what gave me the idea, together with Palestinian scholarship, to investigate the economy of occupation. I’ve stopped using Airbnb, Booking.com, Amazon, and Spotify because I try to be a conscientious consumer. Even besides Palestine, I choose second-hand because there is the fact that everything we purchase is something that gets destroyed. So I love clothes, for example, but it doesn’t mean that it needs to come at the expense of the environment. This is who I am before being a special rapporteur. Of course, I could be better. I could stop purchasing things altogether. But again, we live in an economy that is driven by this. So we need to transition slowly and carefully to another type of economy.”

The unprecedented scale of globalisation is overwhelming, I put it to her. If all of our fingerprints are on the crime scene of Palestine, as she says, that is due to the interconnectedness of the global economy. I’m interested in where she draws the line on individual responsibility. “I don’t think that the system or globalisation is unprecedented,” she argues. “We got here, not via a series of shocks, not through a revolution, but through an evolutionary path that, from colonialism onward, from the birth of capitalism onward, has evolved in this way. Now, what is unprecedented is the possibility for ordinary citizens to understand the system. Palestine has given us the opportunity to do our homework and realise how we are connected. I don’t think there is one day where I don’t quote at least once this groundbreaking study that was recently published by the World Inequality Lab, which says that the richest 0.001%—56,000 multimillionaires—own three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity combined. And this also means that the decision-making power is ultimately not with states as representatives of their citizens, but with states responding to the influence of these big interests. In dictatorships, it’s more obvious. In democracies, it’s less obvious.”

So is it worth trying at all? “There are people in decision-making positions at the state level that are responsible. And this is where we still have an effect. For example, Norway. Norway and the Norwegian people say they are friends of Palestine. And still, 6.9% of their sovereign wealth, meaning all the revenues from the sale of oil, has been invested in businesses connected to the Israeli occupation. And the Norwegian government has acted with the utmost hypocrisy, because they first responded to me that it was not true, that it was just a matter of divergent interpretation of international law. Then, when my report came out and the Norwegian government was confronted by their people, the leftist party [in power] committed to withdrawing their investments.”

The end of the Norwegian case isn’t all that happy, however. Advocacy on Palestine is the proverbial three steps forward and two steps back. “Once they were in government again after the elections, they even scrapped the poor ethical guidelines that they wrote,” she says. Albanese is not uncritical of the conduct of individuals, either. “I’ve realised how selfish we are. The fact that Airbnb and Booking.com are still investing in Israel and even in the colonies [settlements] means that they have had no pressure whatsoever from outside. We prefer our own comfort. There are people who really think that they support Palestinians by putting a like or a sad face on social media.”

Albanese does not deal in false hope. She does not offer facile solutions. “I can say with confidence that a lasting peace will require sacrifice from everyone,” she writes in When the World Sleeps. The genocide will end after consistent and widespread pressure from all corners of society, and we’re not there yet. “Again, we have not changed. I insist that it’s not that during the Holocaust Europeans didn’t know. There were ordinary Europeans in Poland, in Hungary, in Germany, in Italy, and in France who appropriated the property of Jewish people when their neighbours were put in ghettos or were sent to die at Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Mauthausen. And it’s not true that Europeans didn’t know that there were colonial crimes being committed, because there were zoos in Europe where people of colour were held until the 1960s. And look at the United States and how they treat their own non-white minorities, but also their white populations that are sadistically and cynically called ‘white trash’. So there are sacrificial communities everywhere, groups of people living on liminal lands.”

Gerry Simpson, professor of public international law at the London School of Economics, argues that, for international lawyers, a “genteel form of expression” has become the norm “despite the enormity of what is at stake”. And in doing so, the victim is lost: the language of international law affords them only “a severely attenuated emotional life”. Take the example of crimes against humanity, which, as the name implies, are “crimes that disturb humanity’s self-conception”. “So who is the real victim here?” Simpson asks. “Humanity? Or the person who happens to be tortured?”

But occasionally, a human voice cuts through. Adila Hassim went viral as she fought back tears when presenting South Africa’s case against Israel on allegations of genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice. Chris Gunness, the former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), unaware that the camera was still rolling, began to sob after an interview with Al Jazeera following a fresh assault on Gaza in 2014. And Albanese, too, lets her emotions be known. “I always experience a sense of shock and delusion when I come to this room,” she said, visibly frustrated, before the UN General Assembly. “Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathise with the Palestinians?” So how does she stay sane when she’s made it her task to highlight, in part through modelling, this dissonance, frustration, and grief? “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” she says. “I’m not sure I’m sane, really. I’m trying my best to stay human, which is not easy, and not to become numb to other people’s suffering. Then, of course, I’m surrounded by the love of so many. And so I still keep faith in life. I see the Palestinians, how, despite the pain and despite how unjust the world is toward them, how gentle they remain. And so I think that I have no reason to be less understanding and kind than them.”

Trauma, of course, both is begotten by and shapes the assault on Gaza. In When the World Sleeps, Albanese writes that trauma left unchecked “sooner or later will inevitably manifest itself externally, potentially harming a person’s emotional, psychological, and relational abilities forever”. And the genocide has unleashed a global epidemic of trauma. “Israel has made young people, its young citizens, into the executioners of genocide,” she says. “And this is a traumatic experience. Of course, it’s traumatic for the Palestinians who are being genocided or exposed to settler terror on an everyday basis. It’s traumatic for the Palestinian diaspora, who see that with a sense of impotence in the West, but also for those in Arab countries who are silenced. And then there are those who see all this, like people like you and I.”

So what’s the treatment for this condition? “Some of us, like me, have the possibility to speak out, and I think this is cathartic and healing. But then, of course, there are those who see and pretend not to see. Even this is a way of coping. Denial is one of the stages of trauma, like rage, like depression, and acceptance, and then feeling [that you need] to do something [to bring about] change. We all need to get to that stage of grief. For me, today, despite all the pressure, the death threats, the sanctions, and how nightmarish my life has become, I’m almost calmer. I have less anxiety because I think, ‘What matters the most to me as a person? My children, my husband, my friends, my family.’ We need to get to a level of self-consciousness that allows us to function together, to resist together, to get rid of these plutocracies and this necrocapitalism, and build something alternative and better.”

I notice that Albanese often speaks in the first-person plural: we—you and me—will resist together. When most UN appointees say “we”, they mean states and the institutions to which states have delegated authority, such as the agencies of the UN. So where is the UN in her vision for peace in Palestine? Has it met the moment? “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” she says. “I think I’ve been able to make a difference. I mean, I’ve just confirmed what Palestinians and human rights organisations have said and denounced for decades. I think I managed to shift the debates and to pierce that veil of hypocrisy that was allowing Israel to hide itself behind the self-defence argument that is untenable. Have I met the moment? I don’t know, the genocide is still [going] on. How many lives have I saved? Honestly, I can’t tell you. I have the feeling that it’s very few. Sometimes I’ve even been scared that the more I challenge Israel and the US, the more vindictive they become.”

Speaking to Albanese is a different experience from speaking to most UN appointees: attempts to engage them on the broader political and economic context usually become a tug-of-war back to the home base of international law. Her books and speeches share a genome with political memoirs and campaign rallies (Albanese has previously ruled out becoming a politician, albeit on the grounds that there is not a party in Italy “that really looked like a home big enough for me to continue to be who I am”). Is her willingness to engage in politics a response to the failures of international law on Palestine? After all, UN General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine, as Noura Erakat points out. Or does she still have faith in international lawyering and human rights? “I do, I do, I do, I do, I do,” she insists. “Everything is to be tried. But what makes a difference are the masses. I know that it’s risky, and this is why it’s important that people with power, people with an established and protected status, not the refugees and the migrants, take to the streets and protest. And also, of course, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, both in the West and in the rest of the world, because this is a grammar of ethical engagement, of ethical and responsible citizenship.”

So it’s everyday folk who will bring about peace in Palestine? I’m surprised that, as an international lawyer, she doesn’t give human rights institutions a larger part. “Yeah, look, when it comes to the human rights community, I think of Palestine Action,” she says. “I think of Jewish Voice for Peace. I think of the LGBTQI+ community, which has exposed Israel’s pinkwashing. You know, it’s the unity of the people, the unity of the struggle, and the interconnectedness of the struggle that makes a difference. Do I have faith in it? It depends. It depends on how strong this army of moral warriors stands together. We need to stand united. Palestine eventually has shown what the value of sumud [steadfastness] is, which is a grammar of indigeneity. And it speaks to everything, everyone in every place, including in western societies, where so many are seeing their fundamental freedoms shrinking and shrinking because of necrocapitalism. So this is putting solidarity to the test.” ♥

Hair and makeup SACHI YAMASHITA at ASG using CARITA and PHYTO PARIS
Photography assistant DINA MEDDEB
Styling assistant SABRINA LEINA
Production IBRAHIM SHEBANI
Post-Production GAMMA IMAGING

THIS STORY IS TAKEN FROM LOVE A/W 27 ISSUE, AVAILABLE TO ORDER AT KD PRESSE.

*Following concerns raised after publication, we would like to clarify that UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was not involved in the styling process or in the selection of the brands featured in the shoot.

As a condition for the shooting, Francesca Albanese had specifically asked that the clothing be consistent with BDS guidance, and relied on the LOVE styling team to take that into account.

BDS follows a strategic targeting approach, focusing on a limited number of companies for maximum impact, and distinguishes between consumer boycott priority targets, grassroots or “organic” boycott targets, and pressure targets.

While LVMH, Loro Piana and Celine are not among the BDS movement’s current priority boycott or pressure targets, they are listed on other boycott-monitoring platforms, including Boycat and Gaza.nu, which apply broader criteria than the BDS movement’s strategic priority framework.

This is very important, because the fact that a company does not appear among BDS priorities should not be understood as a broader ethical endorsement of that company. We are therefore sorry for our oversight.

Styling remained entirely the responsibility of LOVE, and our team understood the choices made to be consistent with the guidance Ms Albanese had communicated. Given her mandate and the attention the issue has since received, we nevertheless felt it important to clarify the circumstances transparently.