UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese says torture ‘has effectively become state policy’ in Israel. Published On 23 Mar 202623 Mar 2026A United Nations expert says the world has given Israel a licence to torture Palestinians, with life in the occupied Palestinian territory “a continuum of physical and mental suffering”.Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights situation in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, said on Monday that “torture has effectively become state policy” in Israel.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“Israel has effectively been given a licence to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it,” she said, as she presented her latest report to the UN Human Rights Council.“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 in the report, titled “Torture and genocide”.“Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation rooms,” the report outlined.“Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence, and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory has become a space of collective punishment, where the destruction of the conditions of life turns genocidal violence into a tool of collective torture with long-term mental and physical consequences for the occupied population,” it added.Albanese, an outspoken critic of Israeli action in the occupied West Bank and its genocidal war on Gaza, has faced backlash from Israel and the United States, with mounting calls for her removal from the position of special rapporteur. Advertisement Since October 7, 2023, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 72,263 people and injured 171,944 others, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.In the o …
