The US government of President Donald Trump has sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine.
The move means that any assets Albanese has in the US will be frozen, and that her ability to travel to America will likely be restricted.
Announcing the sanctions on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Italian lawyer had launched “political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel”.
Albanese, born in Ariano Irpino in 1977, is a human rights lawyer with over two decades of experience in international law and human rights. She has a degree in law from the University of Pisa, as well as a master’s in human rights law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London.
The 48-year-old is an affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University in Washington.
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She also teaches a course she designed herself on “humanitarian, legal and political responses to the Palestinian forced displacement” as a non-resident professor at a number of universities, including in Bethlehem, Birzeit and Salento.
Albanese has held a number of UN positions during her career. These have included two years working with the UN Development Programme in Morocco, as well as four years in Geneva as a human rights officer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
She also worked as a legal officer in Jerusalem for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Throughout her career, Albanese has written extensively about the legal situation in Israel and Palestine. She is the co-author of the books Palestinian Refugees in International Law (2020), and J’Accuse (2024).
Outside of the UN, she provides research and legal assistance on migration and asylum seekers for the think tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development, and co-founded the Global Network on the Question of Palestine, a group of experts and scholars engaged in the issue of Israel and Palestine.
Since May 2022, she has been the UN special rapporteur on human rights in occupied Palestine. In that role, she has published a number of legal opinions and reports.
These include reports on the violation of the law of self-determination in Palestine, the mass deprivation of liberty of Palestinians, the violation of childhood in Palestine, and two publications on acts of genocide committed by Israel against Palestinians.
In March last year, she presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council, in which she said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.
Albanese cited mass killings, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the creation of conditions that could lead to the physical destruction of Palestinians in the enclave.
Report on ‘economy of genocide’
The Italian lawyer’s most recent publication was cited by Rubio as a key reason for her sanctioning by the US.
On 30 June, Albanese wrote a report naming over 60 companies, including major US technology firms such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which she said were involved in “the transformation of Israel’s economy of occupation to an economy of genocide”.
‘There is an oligarchy connected to the defence industry, including in Europe and in the US, getting rich out of the genocide’
– Francesca Albanese
The report called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and national judicial systems to pursue investigations and prosecutions of corporate executives and companies. It also called on UN member states to pursue sanctions and asset freezes.
Rubio accused Albanese of writing “threatening letters” to entities worldwide, including major US firms, “making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives”.
“We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty,” he said.
Rubio also cited Albanese engaging with the ICC and recommending it issue arrest warrants to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister. The indictments were handed out in November.
Last month, the US government issued sanctions on four ICC judges over their roles in issuing Israeli arrest warrants and investigating US crimes committed in Afghanistan.
UN rapporteur: Tech firms and corporations profiting from Israeli ‘economy of genocide’
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Also last month, the Trump administration wrote a letter to Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, calling on him to remove Albanese from her post.
Rubio has accused the special rapporteur of “unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West”. Albanese denies these accusations.
In an interview with Middle East Eye this week, shortly before the sanctions were announced, she heavily criticised multinational companies for profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.
“There is an oligarchy connected to the defence industry, including in Europe and in the US, getting rich out of the genocide,” she said.
“Today… we have a legal framework that makes 100 percent crystal clear that any engagement with the occupation is unlawful – because we have criminal proceedings for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, against either the state of Israel or Israeli officials,” she told MEE.
