Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer and scholar, is the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, comprising the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Her job is to report to the UN on the human rights situation in these territories.

Since its inception in 1993, the role of rapporteur has been controversial and at times adversarial. Previous appointees were regularly castigated by Israeli governments and pro-Israel lobby groups for their perceived biases against Israel.

The same is true for Albanese. Since she assumed her position in May 2022, she has been an outspoken and persistent critic of Israel’s occupation and especially its war on Gaza. She has argued that Israel’s actions amount to genocide.

As punishment for her efforts to expose persistent Israeli breaches of international humanitarian law, the US Department of Treasury has classified Albanese as a “specially designated national”. This prevents any US citizen and corporation from engaging with her. All of her US assets have been frozen.

Albanese is the first UN official to be sanctioned by the US Treasury – a fate she shares with Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the recently deposed president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

Review: When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine – Francesca Albanese (Hardie Grant)

It is from this perspective that Albanese writes her latest book, When the World Sleeps. She seeks to give a voice and character to Palestinians and their struggle for justice and dignity in the face of Israel’s nearly 60-year occupation, which, even before Hamas’ devastating attack in October 2023, had been criticised as a form of apartheid.

When the World Sleeps presents ten stories that aim to “grapple with the past and present of Palestine”. For readers unfamiliar with the exigencies of the Israel-Palestine conflict, these stories will make for uncomfortable and confronting reading.

According to Albanese, they are accounts from either “the ground-zero of genocide” or from those “forced to watch the atrocities unfold from afar.” Her assessment of what is happening to Palestinians, not just post-2023, but since 1948, will be viewed by some readers and commentators as controversial, even heretical.

It challenges the dominant perception of the conflict, continually perpetuated by western governments.........

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