UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territories Says Standing with Palestine is Defending Humanity
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, stated on Wednesday in Tunis that "standing with Palestine is defending our common humanity."
She estimated that "neutrality" in the face of war in the Gaza Strip constitutes "direct support for occupation and complicity in genocide."
Speaking at a meeting organized by Cérès Éditions as part of the 40th edition of the Tunis International Book Fair, Albanese said that the Palestinian issue has become a "moral mirror" revealing the contradictions of the international system.
She considered that Palestinian resilience goes beyond the idea of resistance, translating into the ability to preserve "identity and existence" in the face of attempts to erase them.
The UN official also praised campaigns of boycott in Tunisia against certain international brands, estimating that "the conscious consumer exercises real influence on the financing chains." According to her, these campaigns constitute an example of "civil resistance" capable of exerting pressure on supporters of the Zionist entity.
Citing the thought of Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, particularly in his book "Intellectuals and Power," she estimated that the intellectual must be "a sincere mirror of society," charged with "telling the truth" and recording their era to preserve collective memory.
She also highlighted the convergences between Said's thought and that of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci around the figure of the engaged intellectual, associating knowledge and concrete action.
Furthermore, she criticized what she called the "greed" of global rental platforms and economic systems prioritizing "profit" over fundamental rights, particularly those of vulnerable categories.
The Italian jurist also presented her new book "When the World Sleeps: Stories, Voices, and Wounds of Palestine," published by Cérès Éditions.
In this book, written in part in Tunisia, she gathered testimonies from Palestinian women, men, and children confronted with war and displacement, in an attempt to "preserve human voices at the heart of the catastrophe."
Italian jurist and academic Francesca Albanese has held the position of UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2022.
