UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese to speak at Trinity next month

SADAKA: The Ireland Palestine Alliance and Academia for Palestine have announced that the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, will be speaking at Trinity College Dublin.

The event will take place on Wednesday, November 4, in The Burke Theatre at 6pm.

Albanese will give a keynote lecture on Palestine and the failure of EU values.

"Three years into Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and amidst escalating state violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the EU has failed to impose even minimal sanctions on Israel," a statement about the event reads.

"Instead, the EU continues its preferential trade deal with Israel, EU countries continue to arm Israel, and Israel continues to participate in research, sporting and cultural events organised by European institutions - in most cases against the will of European citizens. What does this mean for the EU project and ‘EU values’?"

 

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Albanese, a specialist in international human rights law, has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories since 2022. She has been a long-time critic of Israel's unauthorised occupation of Palestinian territories. In March 2024, she reported to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide.

She recently published a book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. The book tells ten stories of different Palestinian people, with Albanese serving as narrator.

Her academic work on the legal situation in Israel and Palestine is highly regarded, and she regularly lectures on forced displacement and international law at universities in Europe and the Arab region.

More information on the lecture can be found here.