Via Dropsite
“This is not the first genocide in human history. This is at least the third genocide, if not the fourth or the fifth that occurs in my lifetime. This is the first genocide that awakened global conscience and global response. Palestine is allowing us to see what the law becomes when it is in the hands of power. Palestine is allowing us to see what connects all injustices, what happens to Yemen, to Sudan, to Congo, and including in places where poverty has not been so rooted as it is today for a long time, including in the West, we have a common enemy, and we need to face it where politics is at the service of economic interests.”
That was Francesca Albanese (@FranceskAlbs), the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, during the closing panel of the Doha Forum 2025, which focused on the global collapse of trust in governments and institutions and the meaning of justice.
Speaking on Gaza and Palestine, Albanese called the situation “apocalyptic,” saying it has exposed not a failure of international law itself, but a total political collapse of moral accountability. She said the delayed UN ceasefire vote, followed by Israel using the ceasefire to continue what the genocide did not finish, showed how international mechanisms have been hollowed out by power and impunity. She said Gaza has revealed Western hypocrisy and a deeper dishonesty at the core of the global system.
At the same time, Albanese noted Palestine has also sparked a global awakening, driven by youth, workers, and civil servants who mobilized across the former settler colonial states US, in Europe, and beyond. She addressed the unprecedented US sanctions imposed on her, calling them illegal and a violation of the UN Charter. “What I am left with is my dignity and my voice,” she said. “I will not be silenced while I still have breath in my lungs.”
Ending on a call to action, Albanese said the International Court of Justice has already made the legal path clear: Israel must end the occupation, withdraw its forces, dismantle settlements, and stop exploiting Palestinian resources. Justice, she noted, demands nothing less.
