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On 24th March 2026, Francesca Albanese presented her latest findings on the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Albanese has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1st May 2022.
This was her eighth report to the Human Rights Council, the fifth documenting the ongoing genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people.
In her report, the Special Rapporteur stated that Israel’s systematic torture of Palestinians, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory.
She said that since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty.
“What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.”
Albanese said that policies imposed by senior officials, including the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, have institutionalised torture, collective punishment and manifestly dehumanising conditions of detention.
“Those responsible for these heinous violations of human rights, from which no derogation is possible even in times of war, must face investigation and justice, including before the International Criminal Court,” the Special Rapporteur said.
Notes
A UN press release on the report can be read here.
The full report entitled ‘Torture and genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’ can be accessed here.