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Francesca Albanese UN Special Rapporteur gives a speech in Bogota, Colombia, on July 15, 2025. [Juancho Torres – Anadolu Agency]
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has refused calls to resign and rejected criticism from states that fail to condemn genocide in Palestine. She stressed that she will not accept “lessons from countries that violate international law and fail to condemn genocide.”
Earlier on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for the resignation of the UN rapporteur over comments she made allegedly targeting Israel at a conference on Gaza.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher, she urged Western governments to discuss the reports she has submitted on alleged Israeli violations, rather than target her personally. She said the debate should focus on the content of her reports, not on her as an individual.
Albanese stated that she is facing what she described as a smear campaign because of her condemnation of what she called Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the West Bank. She said: “The campaign of attack against me is nothing compared to the genocide suffered by the Palestinians.”
Responding to accusations that she had exceeded her UN mandate, Albanese said she had not overstepped her authority. She argued that the intensity of the criticism reflects the impact of her human rights work.
She also said she does not receive a salary for her role and that she has faced personal pressure and sanctions. However, she added that she draws strength from the suffering of Palestinians, especially mothers in Gaza, and that she seeks to inspire others to stand up for justice.
In a related development, Albanese said remarks by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot confirmed her position on what she described as “special protection for Israel”. She said he should have condemned Israeli crimes instead of attacking her.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Protest at ICRC building in Gaza in support of Palestinian political prisoners in 2024. Photo: AA
The Israeli occupation authorities have banned the international organization from visiting political detainees held in its prisons since October 7, 2023, which many say reflects Israel’s collective punishment policy.
A press conference was held in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Al-Bireh city, in the central occupied West Bank on Tuesday, February 10.
The event was organized as part of an international campaign to gather one million signatures demanding that the ICRC resume its visits to Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
A number of press conferences were held in parallel in nine other cities across the world, including Beirut, Gaza, Cairo, Rabat, Tunis, Brussels and Paris in coincidence with the one held in Al-Bireh.
It is worth mentioning that Israel has banned the international organization from visiting the prisoners since October 7, 2023.
The political detainees held by Israel have also been deprived of family visits, and their lawyers have rarely been able to meet them for 28 months, amid continuously deteriorating humanitarian conditions inside the prisons.
The brutal crackdown against the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement pre-dates the genocide in Gaza, but began in January 2023, by Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Israel has misused the presence of the ICRC in the occupied territories to whitewash its crimes, says Qadura Fares
During the conference, former head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Qadura Fares, highlighted the key role that the ICRC has played in safeguarding various humanitarian issues internationally and inside occupied Palestine, including the prisoners’ issue.
“We know that the ICRC operates in accordance with international conventions, and in a way that is consistent with its mission as an international humanitarian organization. We are not asking the ICRC to do anything beyond its capacity, but to exert pressure on Israel through the appropriate international legal channels,” Fares noted.
“Nobody can expect Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu or Smotrich as racist fascist leaders to reconsider their decisions and permit the visits to the prisoners again on their own,” the prominent Palestinian political leader added.
Fares emphasized that this goal will be reached only with pressure being exerted on the Israeli authorities in order to cancel the arbitrary measures against the prisoners.
He also affirmed that the ICRC is able to exert such pressure, but it opted to work “within the limits of the authorization given to it by the Israeli occupation government.”
Fares further pointed out that Israel is misusing the presence of the ICRC and other international organizations in the occupied territories to whitewash its image, by showing that these international bodies are allowed to operate there, while their jurisdiction is extremely restricted and confined by the unlawful Israeli regulations.
The prisoners’ issue is a concern of people of conscience worldwide
Meanwhile, director of the Center for the Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights (Hurryyat), Helmi Al-Araj, asserted that the fact that the campaign has been launched from many cities around the world, including European cities “provides a conclusive evidence that the segregation of the detainees in ghetto-like prisons led to an uprising by the people of conscience all over the globe to support them.”
“This once again proves that all the peoples who struggle for freedom worldwide consider the issue of the Palestinian prisoners, in particular, and the Palestinian cause, in general, their own cause,” Al-Araj maintained.
For his part, Palestinian political activist, freedom fighter, and former prisoner in Israeli jails, Omar Assaf, indicated that Lebanese and Syrian nationals have also been held in Israeli prisons, while the majority of the prisoners detained by Israel are Palestinians.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Monday gave an update to the Human Rights Council on the situation in El Fasher, Sudan. Photo: screenshot
As the war grinds on well past 1,000 days, famine grips more and more areas in what is already the country with high levels of hunger
“We can only expect worse to come” in Sudan if the war is not stopped, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned the Human Rights Council on February 9, as famine conditions expand in the country facing the highest levels of hunger in the world.
Apart from Gaza, which has been suffering Israel’s genocidal war since October 2023, there are only two officially declared ongoing famines in the world – both in this North African country, in the throes of a civil war raging for nearly three years.
One of them is in South Kordofan State’s capital, Kadugli, gripped by famine since last September, following a prolonged siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), fighting its former ally, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), since April 2023.
Also besieged further north was the state’s second largest city, Dilling, where hunger levels “are likely similar to Kadugli, but cannot be classified due to insufficient reliable data – a result of restricted humanitarian access and ongoing hostilities,” the UN had said.
Siege broken, but relief may be “temporary”
Earlier, on February 3, the SAF announced it had broken the siege on Kadugli, days after making a similar advance, taking control of the supply routes to Dilling in late January, reconnecting the two cities to North Kordofan.
With the markets re-supplied, prices of essential food items in Kadugli have dropped to a fraction of what they had surged to under siege, Sudan Tribune reported on February 8.
However, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) had cautioned in its report on February 5 that the relief for its residents may only be “temporary”. It warned of the possibility “that Famine will persist through May in the absence of a ceasefire and sustained humanitarian access. It is expected that the towns will remain heavily contested, and the risk is high that renewed siege-like conditions will be re-established between February and May.”
Drone attacks on food trucks amid famine
Türk also highlighted this volatility in his briefing to the Human Rights Council on February 9. Although the SAF and its allied armed groups have broken the siege on these cities, “drone strikes by both sides continue, resulting in dozens of civilian deaths and injuries,” he added.
Two days before, on February 7, the RSF had killed at least 24 people (including eight children, among them infants) with a drone strike on a humanitarian convoy transporting residents fleeing the fighting in South Kordofan State’s Dubeiker area to North Kordofan in the city of Rahad.
A day earlier, one was killed and many more wounded in the drone attack on a convoy of the World Food Program (WFP), en route to supplying aid to the displaced people sheltering in North Kordofan’s capital, El Obeid.
Building earthen walls around El Obeid, the SAF is holding out against the RSF to defend this strategic city enroute to the national capital, Khartoum, from the Darfur region in western Sudan. The RSF has taken control over most of this region after overrunning North Darfur State’s capital, El Fasher, also in the throes of famine since last September.
“Mass atrocities committed in Darfur may repeat Kordofan”: warns the UN
After laying a siege for over 500 days and starving the residents of this last major city in the five states of Darfur holding against the RSF, the paramilitary overran its defenses in late October. Barely two months later, satellite imagery analysis by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) had confirmed that the city had been depopulated by the RSF after likely killing tens of thousands of its residents.
“My Office sounded the alarm about the risk of mass atrocities in the besieged city of El Fasher for more than a year,” Türk added in his briefing, regretting, “The threat was clear, but warnings were not heeded.” He went on to warn, “I am extremely concerned that these violations and abuses may be repeated in the Kordofan region,” which has become the center of fighting since the fall of El Fasher.
Famine-conditions spread in Darfur
An estimated 127,000 people have managed to escape El Fasher and its surrounding areas, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). A large number of them fled toward the Chadian border, sheltering in northwestern reaches of Darfur in towns like Um Baru and Kernoi, and further west in the border town of El Tine, where militias allied with the SAF and local self-defense groups are still holding fort against the RSF.
With this influx increasing the strain on the limited resources of these remote towns, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) data released on February 6 confirmed that hunger levels, already classified as “catastrophic”, have exceeded the “famine” threshold. Over half of all children in Um Baru, and 34% in Kernoi, are suffering acute malnutrition.
”Many other conflict-affected or inaccessible areas may also be facing similarly catastrophic conditions; however, the full extent remains unknown due to limited access and uncertainty over how rapidly conditions are deteriorating,” the IPC report added.
With millions suffering malnutrition across Sudan, especially in Darfur and Kordofan regions, Action Against Hunger has warned that “more than 375,000 people are at real risk of starvation.”
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks at a press conference in Washington, DC, on January 22, 2026. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
“This is a new kind of era of depravity opened up,” said the congresswoman. “There was this stated commitment on human rights—that innocent civilians were almost exempt from the rules of war, from blockades.”
As the Cuban government announced Monday that the Trump administration’s oil blockade on the country would soon leave airlines without jet fuel, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that the international community has become far too accepting of acts of economic warfare that collectively punish an entire population, not just government officials.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone that the stage for the worsened suffering of Cuban people was set in Gaza, where both Republican and Democratic US officials have backed Israel’s starvation policy and military assault since October 2023.
“This is what we’ve seen with Gaza, right, this is a new kind of era of depravity opened up, where there used to be—or there was this stated commitment on human rights—that innocent civilians were almost exempt from the rules of war, from blockades,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
🎥 WATCH | Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) reacted to Drop Site News reporting on internal divisions in the Trump administration’s Cuba policy by pointing to Gaza as evidence of a broader collapse in Western human rights norms.
Cuban people have long been victimized by the US government’s decadeslong, illegal trade embargo. But Trump’s decision to cut off Cuba’s oil supply from Venezuela, which was its largest energy supplier, and threaten to slap tariffs on any country that provides oil to the island nation, has left families facing lengthy blackouts and the threat that Cuba’s healthcare system could soon grind to a halt without fuel to keep hospitals running.
Trump has claimed he aims to punish the Cuban government, which he said last month constitutes “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US. He accused the country, without evidence, of harboring terrorists. Cuban officials have vehemently condemned the accusations.
Ocasio-Cortez compared Trump’s economic attack on Cuba to the catastrophe the US-backed Israeli military has imposed on Gaza since 2023, when it began its assault and humanitarian aid blockade in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. A “ceasefire” deal was reached in October, but hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces since then and Israel has continued to block aid.
While persistently claiming Hamas is the target of the assault—which international experts and human rights groups have called a genocide—the Israeli military, with US support, has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians and has bombed homes, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure.
“What has transpired is that now it’s kind of become acceptable that the entire Western world will look the other way as they starve and deprive a people because they find political actors or political regimes in that country to be objectionable,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “What we are seeing here is the possible precipice of hospitals running out of fuel… We’re talking about innocent children, women that could be put in harm’s way.”
“It’s incumbent upon all of us to defend human rights no matter where they are,” she added.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, agreed with the congresswoman’s analysis.
“Gaza was not just a genocide,” he said, but was meant to further Israel’s goal “to destroy much of international law and the norms around the use of force in order to make increasingly inhumane use of violence and coercion against CIVILIANS permissible.”
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, added that Ocasio-Cortez was “rightly picking up the banner of a rules-based international consensus” on human rights, which was abandoned by the Biden administration when it gave financial and political support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Ocasio-Cortez echoed the concerns voiced earlier this week by Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, an international expert on sanctions law, who told the Cuban storytelling outlet Belly of the Beastthat the Trump administration was “posing the risk of imminent humanitarian collapse in relation to the lack of fuel, which may gravely affect basically all human rights of the civilian population there.”
“Sanctions should be expected to be limited to officials,” said Dupont. “They are not supposed to apply bluntly to the whole population—which they do. They constitute collective punishment to the extent that they hit each and every Cuban citizen irrespective of their relationship with the government or regime.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Sirius, a boat taking part in the Global Sumud Flotilla, departs from Barcelona on September 1, 2025. (Photo by Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
Organizers say they’re “mobilizing thousands from over 100 countries in a coordinated, nonviolent response to genocide, siege, mass starvation, and the destruction of civilian life in Gaza.”
Organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla—the largest-ever activist effort to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by sea—said Thursday that they will launch a new and bigger mission next month to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian exclave, whose people have suffered from 28 months of genocidal Israeli war and siege.
Global Sumud Flotilla called its spring 2026 mission, which is scheduled to depart from Barcelona on March 29, “a historic escalation in civilian-led maritime action to break the illegal blockade of Gaza.”
“We are sailing again this year. This time, we’re sailing with more boats, and more activists… and we are determined to break this illegal siege on Gaza and show the world that the peace talks are not really peace talks, but the further colonization of Palestinian territories,” organizer Yasmin Acar toldSouth African Broadcasting Corporation News Radio. “We will not stop until the siege is broken.”
Global Sumud Flotilla said: “A primary focus of the 2026 mission is the deployment of a specialized medical fleet. Carrying more than 1,000 healthcare professionals and stocked with lifesaving medicines and equipment, this fleet aims to stabilize Gaza’s healthcare system and support the efforts of local medical teams who have endured two years of genocide.”
Today, the Global Sumud Flotilla announced the largest coordinated humanitarian intervention for Palestine in history.
On March 29, 2026, a unified maritime flotilla and overland humanitarian convoy will depart simultaneously, mobilizing thousands from over 100 countries in a… pic.twitter.com/T1GxjWtpTd
Mandla Mandela, grandson of South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and a past flotilla participant, called the new effort “cause… for those that want to rise and stand for justice and dignity for all.”
Last summer, dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from over 40 nations took part in the last Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic—as it attempted to run Israel’s naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to the starving people of Gaza amid Israel’s genocidal war and siege on the people of the coastal strip.
WATCH | Over 3000 participants from over hundred countries will once again sail on more than one hundred vessels as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla Spring 2026 mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. pic.twitter.com/yAlDWHMXV6
Israeli forces intercepted and seized the flotilla vessels in international waters in early October, arresting all aboard the boats and temporarily jailing them in Israel, where some including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunbergsaid they were physically and psychologically abused by their captors.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has made numerous attempts to break Israel’s blockade by sea, all of which ended in more or less the same way. In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
“We may not have reached Gaza physically,” flotilla activist Susan Abdallah toldAl Jazeera Thursday, but “we have reached the people in Gaza.”
“They know that we care, that we will not stop at anything until we actually break the siege,” she added.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
