Law and justice: Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, is in South Africa to deliver the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on Saturday. Photo: Nelson Mandela Foundation
Francesca Albanese is not in South Africa to make anyone feel comfortable. The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories has come to deliver the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture — and she is already testing whether the world still recognises moral clarity when it hears it.
Ahead of Saturday’s lecture, she told journalists it felt like “a call of destiny” to be invited by an institution whose mission is to “stir trouble”.
Echoing Nelson Mandela Foundation chief executive Mbongi-seni Buthelezi’s remark that the lectures must provoke robust debate, she added,in three years in the role, she has begun every meeting the same way: “I’m not here to make you feel comfortable. We need honesty.”
That honesty came quickly.
“South Africa is central to the global fight against genocide, occupation and apartheid in what remains of Palestine,” she said. “But as the UN special rapporteur mandated to report on the human rights situation, I cannot avoid speaking about what Palestinians face today. The situation demands urgent and responsible action from states.”
Albanese told journalists she knew they expected a preview of her lecture, Enhancing Peace and Global Co-operation, but she could not separate the theme from the catastrophe in Gaza.
“This cannot be about me,” she said. “It is about Palestine — and about the moment we live in, because the situation on the ground is beyond catastrophic.”
She dismissed the diplomatic vocabulary of conflict management.
“We have been told that peace would be reached, that there is a ceasefire. But, in the Israeli lexicon, ceasefire means someone else ceases and they keep on firing.”
From memory, she recited the toll: nearly 70 000 Palestinians killed in two years, 500 dead from malnutrition this year alone, families forced to move “from tent to tent, from rubble to rubble, from misery to misery” up to 15 times in two years.
“This is not a war,” she said. “It is a genocide — a deliberate determination to destroy a people as such.
“What makes Palestinians killable, torturable, starvable, destroyable is precisely that they are Palestinians.”
She said the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion last year had already given the world a road map for peace.
“The ICJ was clear — end the occupation, end the exploitation of Palestinian resources, dismantle the colonies and the system of apartheid. Israel was given one year — a very generous term — to withdraw its troops and dismantle its colonies. Instead, the world has looked away.”
The consequences: enforced displacement, starvation as policy, the collapse of medical care, she said.
“What is called a peace plan is deeply inconsistent with the fundamental rules of international law. The situation demands responsibility from states that claim to stand for human rights.”
For her, debate is not theoretical. Albanese’s work has made her one of the most targeted UN officials in recent memory — sanctioned by Washington earlier this year for what she describes as the crime of doing her job.
“When a UN mandate holder is punished for calling genocide by its name, it shows how far the system has decayed.”
Her report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, draws a direct line between commerce and complicity. It names banks, construction giants, defence contractors and technology firms that profit from the siege.
“The machinery of genocide is not only made of weapons,” she said. “It is designed, financed and insured.”
Neutrality, she warned, has become a moral fiction.
“Humanitarianism has been privatised. Diplomacy has been used to justify genocide. The United States and Israel are leading not only the genocide in Gaza — they are leading the collapse of the multilateral system itself.”
Her words also held up a mirror to her hosts.
“Even South Africa, doing so many good things for Palestine — when you look at trade, at resources that go to Israel — no one has clean hands.
“Justice for Palestine starts here.”
South Africa’s case at The Hague has placed it at the moral centre of the debate, but Albanese’s visit comes as that leadership is tested by pragmatism. Her remarks served as both endorsement and warning that the credibility won through legal action must be sustained through policy, trade and public pressure.
Asked about the Global March to Gaza and the Global Sumud Flotilla — grassroots efforts to deliver aid that faced resistance from Egyptian and Tunisian authorities — she called them “noble and necessary” but symptomatic of a broken order.
“It should not have been boats of civilians trying to break an unlawful blockade. It should have been states sending their navies with humanitarian aid. The flotilla showed the power of humanity when it chooses to save, rather than destroy, but it also revealed the failure of governments to act,” Albanese said.
Her sharpest criticism was aimed at the UN itself.
“It’s clear that the UN blessed the partition of Palestine — the beginning of the segregation Palestinians still endure today,” she said.
“That history still lives in the system’s DNA. The United Nations was born in a colonial world order and the mindset of domination that shaped it has never fully gone.”
She said the contradiction between what the UN declares and what it does has hollowed its moral authority.
“The way the UN acts departs so boldly from what it says in the general assembly. That gap means the international system is still ruled by the power of a few states — one in particular, the United States.”
Yet Albanese stopped short of abandoning it.
“I wouldn’t throw away the baby with the dirty water. It has proved inefficient and compromised, but it remains the only multilateral system we have.
“What we need is ethical leadership — not just the right words.”
Diplomacy, she argued, has been “used to justify and procrastinate genocide”, distorting legal concepts such as self-defence to shelter Israel from accountability.
Her remarks set the stage for Saturday’s lecture, when she is expected to expand on how global cooperation has become hostage to power.
The event comes as South Africa prepares to host the G20 summit next month, positioning the country as both the stage and actor in global moral diplomacy.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation’s choice of Albanese signals that shift — from symbolic reconciliation to legal accountability. Her appearance adds a new chapter to the lecture series, long used by global leaders to affirm ideals of peace and cooperation. Albanese’s presence moves it from inspiration to indictment.
“The laws created to stop states from destroying each other,” she said, “are now being used to justify that destruction.”
She linked that collapse to the moral complacency of powerful nations: “If we cannot stop a system like this, and instead reward it, then the very idea of multilateralism collapses with it.”
Her words mirror South Africa’s own foreign-policy dilemma — how to defend universal principles without isolation and how to use its struggle heritage as a tool of global diplomacy rather than nostalgia.
Albanese said South Africa’s history continued to inspire movements for justice across continents.
“This country has inspired generations, including my own. You broke the chains of 300 years of colonialism, the last 50 named apartheid. You keep defending the system born from your struggle.”
Her critics in Europe and the US describe her as biased; her supporters see her as one of the few UN voices still speaking in the language of law and justice, rather than equivocation.
Her invitation to deliver the Mandela lecture is itself a statement — a recognition that moral leadership has migrated southward to countries once treated as subjects of law rather than authors of it.
For Albanese, Gaza is that mirror.
“What happens in Palestine is an apocalypse,” she said, using the word in its older meaning — a revelation.
“It shows who we are as individuals, societies and states. It brings out the best and the worst of us. Let the best overwhelm the rest. As the Mandela foundation reminds us, we must make good trouble,” she said.