Posted on April 12, 2023, by & filed under News, Videos, Webinars.


Reporting on Rights under Occupation: the work of the UN Special Rapporteur in Palestine

 


Francesca Albanese was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, by the Human Rights Council at its 49th session in March 2022 and has taken up her function as of 1 May 2022. She is a lawyer by training, specialized in human rights. Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, as well as a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for a think-tank, Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). She has widely published on the legal situation in Israel and the State of Palestine; Her book "Palestinian Refugees in International Law", co-authored with Lex Takkenberg, is considered a milestone in refugee academic literature. She regularly teaches and lectures on international law and forced displacement at universities in Europe and the Arab region. Ms. Albanese has also worked as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine
Refugees.


The two respondents were:

Professor Ilan Pappe was born in Haifa in 1954 and graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and completed his PhD at the University of Oxford, Britain in 1984. Pappe was a lecturer in the department of political science at the university of Haifa from 1984 to 2006 and was forced to leave due to his support for the Palestinian cause. He was also at that time the director of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa (2000-2006).

Since 2007, Pappe is the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the university of Exeter, UK. He is the author of 20 books among the The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and On Palestine with Noam Chomsky.


Professor Nur Masalha is a Palestinian academic and historian and formerly Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary's University, England. He is currently a Member of the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London. He is the Editor of “Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies,” published by Edinburgh University Press.

Professor Masalha is the author and editor of numerous books in English and Arabic on the history of Palestine and the Palestinians and his books have been translated into several languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Bengali and Chinese, His books include: Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018); Palestine Across Millennia: A History of Literacy, Learning and Educational Revolutions (2022); An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (with Nahla Abdo, 2018); Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives (2014); The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (2013); The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (2012); The Bible and Zionism (2007); Catastrophe Remembered (2005); The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (2003): Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion (2000); A Land Without a People (1997); Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (1992).

His forthcoming book: Palestine Across Millennia: A History of Literacy, Learning and Educational Revolutions (2022); co-editor (with Ahmad Sadi), Decolonizing the Study of Palestine: Indigenous Perspectives and Settler Colonialism after Elia Zureik (July 2023).

Professor Masalha currently serves on the editorial boards of many academic journals and and her serves on UNRWA’s
advisory Archives Committee; he is also as a judge on the panel for the “Palestine Book Award” (London).


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