Humanitarian Resistance for Palestinians in Geneva

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967; Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of UNRWA; Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; and Nicolas Levrat, UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues — all have once again sounded the alarm in Geneva over the tragedy that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank continue to endure.

From the French translated and edited by Global Geneva with AI support (Claude). (See French original HERE)

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese: "Torture Has Become Israel's State Policy"

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, presented her latest report to delegates of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 23, 2026. Life in the occupied Palestinian territory is "a perpetual cycle of physical and mental suffering," and "torture has de facto become a state policy" in Israel, explained the independent Italian expert, who is barred from entering Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

"Israel has effectively been granted a license to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it," she added, asserting that Israel systematically tortures Palestinians on a scale "that suggests collective retribution… My report also shows that torture extends far beyond prison walls, into what can only be described as a torture environment imposed by Israel across the entire occupied Palestinian territory."

Francesca Albanese

"The systematic torture of Palestinians by Israel, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory," she wrote.

Francesca Albanese was appointed in May 2022, a year and a half before Hamas's criminal assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. She is well aware that her reports provoke the fury of the Israeli government and its supporters.

Cases of Torture. A Regime of Humiliation.

At a press conference at the Palais des Nations, the day after presenting her report to the Human Rights Council delegates, Francesca Albanese declared: "The Israeli government can say whatever it wants. It must be held accountable. Do its leaders deserve to be in The Hague?… Israel sustains misery and systematic disorder in Gaza because it helps to drive people away. If all Palestinians left, it would stop."

Francesca Albanese knows the Palestinian territory well, having worked there previously. "We must ask why UN member states, despite what Israel has done, refuse to condemn these practices and continue to supply arms and political support to that state." (SEE Global Geneva article on Israel's banning of international humanitarian organizations, including MSF)

She stated, among other things, that she had been informed "of a one-year-old boy burned with a cigarette by an Israeli soldier to make his father confess." She then listed cases of doctors and journalists she says were "deliberately" killed in the Palestinian enclave. "The media have stopped talking about Gaza. And yet what is happening there is not a ceasefire situation. Look the facts in the face."

"Switzerland Can Do More"

Responding to a question from Global Geneva about what she expects from Switzerland — the depositary state of the Geneva Conventions — the Italian jurist stated: "I have had good contacts with the Swiss authorities. Switzerland could do more. All states, especially Western ones, should do more, and they are not doing so. It pains me to say that Germany and my own country, Italy, are defending and providing more support to Israel. We cannot limit ourselves to condemnation; we must also expect justice to reach the officers and officials who are making decisions today.

As far as Italy is concerned, it is a disgrace — the lowest point of Italian diplomacy, and not only because of what they are doing to a UN Special Rapporteur. They are engaging in a diplomacy of sabotage against me. That does not concern me. What matters is what they are doing to a people who are the victims of a genocide. Given Italy's past and the role it played in the genocide of the Jews in the last century, it is deeply depressing to see what Italy and Germany are doing. It is truly sad. They have learned nothing. We, as people, can do better than this."

On Marwan Barghouti

When asked whether she had any information regarding the situation of Marwan Barghouti — the Palestinian leader imprisoned in Israel since 2002, one of the architects of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s, whom an Israeli court convicted on charges of involvement in four anti-Israeli attacks that claimed five lives during that Intifada, and who is considered a possible successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - the UN Special Rapporteur replied that she had no recent information about him.

She added: "A global campaign for the release of Marwan Barghouti is necessary. For him and for all other Palestinians who are being illegally detained by the Israeli occupation and the apartheid system. There should be a campaign aimed at freeing every Palestinian hostage. This is the moment to draw inspiration from the great resistance of the Israeli people to bring the Israeli hostages home - Bring them home."

A Full House at the University of Geneva

On the evening of March 25, Francesca Albanese spoke at the University of Geneva, in a packed hall at UNI Dufour, alongside Nicolas Levrat, UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, and former Geneva Mayor Rémy Pagani, a member of the Swiss Gaza Flotilla expedition last October, who was imprisoned for six days along with other activists in the Israeli Ktzi'ot prison. The Mayor of Gaza, Yahya Al-Sarraj, described via videoconference the tragic situation faced by Palestinians in a Gaza Strip that has been almost entirely destroyed.

On February 26, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk had described "the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory as a man-made catastrophe" before representatives of UN member states.

"The evidence gathered by my Office reveals a consistent pattern of egregious human rights violations and abuses, serious violations of international law, and atrocity crimes that remain unpunished," he had declared.

Philippe Lazzarini

Philippe Lazzarini's Appeal for UNRWA

Philippe Lazzarini, the highest-ranking Swiss national in a UN organization, who will step down as head of UNRWA on March 31 as he announced last August at the Swiss Press Club, also spoke in Geneva at an event organized at the Maison de la Paix by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID). Having led the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) since 2020, the Commissioner-General shared a sobering assessment with his audience (see link to original English text below).

"This evening, I would like to share with you what it has been like to lead an organization on the front line of the war in Gaza, subjected to violent attacks from the Israeli government and those who blindly support its objective of putting an end to UNRWA. Allow me to begin with October 7, 2023: I was at home when I learned of these heinous attacks against Israel. I think we all remember where we were and what we were doing that day.

"The impact of those attacks and the brutal war that followed in Gaza cannot be overstated. Hamas's attacks on Israel caused profound, collective, and intergenerational trauma. The shock and horror of the massacres and abductions reverberated across Europe, North America, and beyond, polarizing societies over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What followed was the most intense bombardment of a civilian population since the Second World War, turning Gaza into a post-apocalyptic wasteland."

UNRWA

Philippe Lazzarini recalled: "The war had been going on for nearly four weeks when I traveled to Gaza in early November 2023 — I was the first senior UN official to do so. A total siege had been imposed and nothing could enter the Gaza Strip. People were lacking everything. I visited one of our schools in Rafah, which was sheltering thousands of displaced civilians. There, I met a little girl — she must have been 7 or 8 years old — the same age as my youngest child. She had taken refuge in the school where she used to study. She stood before me, begging me for a sip of water and a piece of bread. The despair in her eyes still haunts me today."

That was only the beginning of the war. Since then, Gaza has been reduced to rubble.

Philippe Lazzarini described an intolerable situation: "Despite our outrage each time famine strikes, our determination to prevent it, and despite the repeated warnings of food security experts, the Israelis imposed a strict siege and did not allow food to enter Gaza. Food was used as a weapon, and hunger spread and worsened to the point that famine was declared for more than half a million people in Gaza City — a man-made famine. To add a further layer of cruelty, thousands of starving people were forced to go to distribution points run by the notorious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to receive aid. These were death traps. Nearly 2,000 starving people were killed at these sites as they desperately sought food. Eventually, after at least 72,000 people had been violently killed, and with thousands more missing under the rubble, a ceasefire was declared last October. A ceasefire in name only. I say this because military operations have claimed more than 650 lives since then."

The senior Swiss international official, who also holds Italian nationality, is no stranger to war situations, having previously worked for the ICRC, among other roles. At the Maison de la Paix, he recalled that UNRWA, a United Nations agency, was created in 1948 as a temporary measure, pending a political solution for the Palestinian people.

"For decades, Israel regarded this agency as a necessary evil. The elimination of UNRWA has become a war objective. The Israeli government argues that Hamas is Gaza, that Gaza is UNRWA, and that UNRWA must therefore be Hamas — all at war. Within two months of the start of the war, 130 of my colleagues had been killed."

Philippe Lazzarini highlighted that "over the past two years, hundreds of UNRWA premises in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. The Israeli Parliament passed a law aimed at ending UNRWA's presence in occupied East Jerusalem, including by forcibly closing schools and clinics. UNRWA headquarters was stormed, looted, and set on fire, while senior Israeli officials celebrated this destruction both on the ground and online. A deputy mayor of Jerusalem called for the 'annihilation' of UNRWA staff. A well-orchestrated disinformation campaign alleges agency-wide violations of neutrality, including infiltration by Hamas, and claims that UNRWA is no longer operational in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"These malicious allegations, which have been repeatedly refuted, are designed to undermine the international support that UNRWA enjoys, thereby weakening Palestinian rights within the framework of the final status issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Going forward, UNRWA will remain the most significant, best-established, and most cost-effective UN humanitarian and development presence in a region in crisis. It also constitutes an essential resource for protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees throughout the region and for addressing the long-standing Palestinian question."

Read Francesca Albanese's report (original English):https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session61/advance-version/a-hrc-61-71-aev.pdf

Read Philippe Lazzarini's full speech (original English):https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/remarks-unrwa-commissioner-general-philippe-lazzarini-geneva-graduate-Institute#block-menu-block-10

Luisa Ballin is a Swiss-Italian contributing editor and journalist for Global Geneva.