Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has become one of the most incisive and vital voices of our time.
Yet in the United States, her words are rarely heard.
Major networks and newspapers either ignore her reports or label them “biased,” while political elites push to discredit her entirely. In Washington, her very name is almost unspeakable.
Across the Global South, however, Albanese’s interventions resonate powerfully. She articulates what many governments and movements from Latin America to Africa have long felt: that a new international order is emerging, one not subordinated to the West but grounded in dignity, solidarity, and justice.
In an interview with The New Arab, Francesca Albanese discusses how Palestine exposes Western hypocrisy and how the Global South is reshaping international solidarity and justice.
The New Arab: You often speak about an 'ethical pragmatism' emerging from the Global South. What do you mean by this?
Francesca Albanese: Something extraordinary is happening. Countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia are no longer content with being at the margins of the world order. This is not about abstract ideology but about survival and dignity. What I call “ethical pragmatism” is exactly this: politics rooted in life, rights, and justice.
The Global South is saying: enough with dependency, enough with vassalage to the United States and Europe.
In Bogotá, and later in The Hague, I felt this shift clearly. We are witnessing a new multilateralism that rejects subordination, emancipates itself from Western influence, and brings with it alternative visions — such as African Ubuntu, Colombian magical realism, and indigenous cosmologies.
It is a process of rewriting international law, not to destroy it, but to transcend it, to give it new life.
How does Palestine fit into this global realignment?
Palestine is the open wound that exposes the hypocrisy of the West. The US and the EU constantly invoke human rights, but when it comes to Israel, every principle is suspended.
For the Global South, standing with Palestine is not an act of charity — it is political emancipation. It means saying: “We refuse to accept rules designed by others to perpetuate inequality.”
That is why Palestine today stands at the centre of a new international realignment.
You have spoken about "healing" as a political category. How does this apply to Palestine?
Every conflict leaves wounds, but the Palestinian trauma was never healed. It has been manipulated and turned into a genocidal project. Israel now advances claims even more extreme than those of the Hutu in Rwanda or the Serbs in Srebrenica.
History always shows the same pattern: there comes an “awakening,” when perpetrators recognise what they have done.
Already, suicides among Israeli soldiers who believed they were “defending their homeland” are alarming. But this awakening comes too late for Palestinians, who continue to endure the cost with resilience and determination.
Starvation has been used as a weapon in Gaza. How do you respond to that?
I cannot even imagine what it means to watch your children die of hunger. I do not have space within me to process such cruelty.
Hunger has become a method: a tool to turn human vulnerability itself into an instrument of annihilation. It is the opposite of healing, the opposite of care.
Many compare Israel today to apartheid South Africa. Is this a fair analogy?
Absolutely. South Africa is among the countries most outspoken in demanding sanctions, arms embargoes, and the isolation of Israel. And they are right. Israel must be treated as apartheid South Africa once was — isolated until change becomes inevitable.
Genocides cannot be stopped through verbal politics that ignore human rights; the response must be concrete. This does not mean cutting ties with critical Israelis, but rather with a state that continues to act with total impunity.
Zionism is not only of Jewish origin; it is a political ideology. Many Jews want nothing to do with it, while many evangelicals strongly support it.
Local governments also have a role to play: they can declare their cities “genocide-free,” refuse products labelled “Made in Israel,” and cut institutional ties that amount to complicity.
At the international level, what is urgently needed is the presence of peacekeepers — a global force, under UN direction, capable of interposition and of protecting civilians from violence.
Such a mission must also address the presence of settlers, who cannot remain in occupied territory if there is to be any just resolution.
Ultimately, if Israel refuses to recognise the Palestinian authority over their own land, the alternative that remains is a single democratic state with equal rights for all.
Some activists insist that "Palestine is a feminist issue." Do you agree?
Entirely. Liberation from colonial violence is also liberation from patriarchy. The two are intertwined. I often use childbirth as a metaphor: immense pain, but also the birth of something new.
That is how I imagine the future: power in the feminine, power that heals and generates. Palestine teaches us this.
You have been censored and attacked personally. How do you live with that?
It is exhausting but revealing. These attacks expose the system's weaknesses. Anyone who defends Palestine today is accused of anti-Semitism, of terrorism, and is personally targeted. It is punishment, plain and simple.
I have become a symbol not by choice, but because everyone who dares to speak is punished. That is why I say we must act collectively, depersonalise the struggle, and become what I call “moral warriors.”
Looking forward, what role can the Global South play?
It is already reshaping the world. While the West clings to obsolete paradigms, the Global South is rewriting the agenda. Not Oslo, not frameworks that have already failed, but solidarity as the foundation of politics.
Twenty years ago, the alter-globalisation movement wanted to “change the world without taking power,” and it was crushed. Today’s generation is more conscious, more interconnected.
This is a historical moment that reminds me of V for Vendetta: people uniting not around leaders, but around values and solidarity. And the Global South is the engine of this transformation.
Ultimately, what message does Palestine convey to the world?
Solidarity is not a luxury, but a political necessity. Genocides are not stopped by rhetoric, but by concrete action. International law must be rewritten, not manipulated. And that from the peripheries of empire — from the South silenced for centuries — comes today the strength to create a different, more just world.
Alba Nabulsi is a Palestinian-Italian journalist, lecturer, and translator based in Padua, Italy
Follow her on Instagram: @nabulsi_girl_in_italy