A new legal analysis by UN Watch accuses Francesca Albanese, a special U.N. rapporteur whom the U.S. federal government sanctioned for her anti-Israel remarks, of distorting international law in her March 2026 report to the Human Rights Council.
In the report, Albanese wrote that Israeli actions “meet the threshold for genocide under the Genocide Convention” and described “a continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror.”
She asserted that “torture is a structural feature of the ongoing Israeli genocide and broader settler-colonial apartheid.”
Dina Rovner, a legal advisor at UN Watch, wrote that Albanese’s conclusions offer “no new evidence of genocidal intent, an essential element of the crime,” and rely on debunked statements and non-mainstream legal theories that “radically expand the definition of torture beyond existing international law.”
“The result is a complete inversion,” Rovner wrote. “Hamas’s openly declared genocidal intent and mass atrocities are recast as crimes committed by Israel. While the Hamas Charter is openly genocidal against Israel, Albanese attributes such intent to Israel.”
The criticism comes after France called for Albanese to resign in February, citing her “outrageous and reprehensible remarks” about Israel.
