Madafeh – Our guest, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories , will discuss her recently-submitted biennial report.

Sunday, August 20, 2023
12:00 PM 1:30 PM 12:00 13:30

Palestine Museum US 1764 Litchfield Turnpike Woodbridge United States (map)

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The event will start at 12:00 Noon US EDT; 19:00 Palestine, 18:00 Europe.

Please join us for a conversation with United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She will discuss her recently submitted biennial report on the human rights conditions in Palestine.

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, finds that arbitrary and deliberate ill-treatment is inflicted upon the Palestinians not only through unlawful practices in detention but also as a carceral continuum comprised of techniques of large-scale confinement -physical, bureaucratic, digital- beyond detention. These violations may amount to international crimes prosecutable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and universal jurisdiction. Israel’s occupation has been a tool of settler colonial conquest also through intensifying methods of confinement against an entire people who – as any people would – continuously rebel against their prison wardens.

Report Introduction

1. In this report, Francesca Albanese, presents concerns related to the widespread and systematic arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory.

2. Despite being invited by the State of Palestine, the Special Rapporteur was unable to visit the occupied Palestinian territory before submitting this report due to Israel’s continued refusal to facilitate her entry. She conducted a remote investigation over six months, including a visit to Jordan, and virtual meetings and tours in the occupied Palestinian territory. The report draws upon these consultations, testimonies, stakeholders’ contributions, and a comprehensive review of primary and public sources.

3. A 10,700-word report cannot capture the scale and extent of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory. Nor can it convey the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have, directly or indirectly, been affected. The report provides a bird’s-eye view of arbitrary deprivation of liberty as a key instrument of Israel’s domination and oppression, addressing primarily structural issues and scale of the phenomenon. International law violations by Palestinian authorities are assessed to the extent they contribute to tightening the grip of the regime imposed by the occupation.

4. The report clarifies circumstances, norms and processes that lead to arbitrary deprivation of Palestinians’ liberty. The reality captured is of an entire occupied population framed as a security threat, often presumed guilty, and punished with incarceration even when trying to exercise fundamental freedoms. This system presents features of persecution, which often involves ill-treatment behind bars and surveillance out of prison. While in-prison confinement is the most acute form of deprivation of liberty imposed on Palestinians, physical, bureaucratic and digital 'architectures' further restrict them spatially and psychologically. This wider carcerality, made of an array of laws, procedures and techniques of coercive confinement, transforms the occupied Palestinian territory into a constantly surveilled open-air panopticon.

5. An examination of this carceral continuum - a system of control composed of multiple and interrelated levels of confinement - underscores the urgency to end it, as required by international law, and ensure both accountability for the architects of its most serious violations and reparations for the victims.

About Francesca Albanese
Ms. Albanese was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, by the Human Rights Council at its 49th session in March 2022 and has taken up her function as of 1 May 2022. Ms. Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, as well as a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for a think-tank, Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). She has widely published on the legal situation in Israel and the State of Palestine and regularly teaches and lectures on international law and forced displacement at universities in Europe and the Arab region. Ms. Albanese has also worked 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.