France does an about-face on Francesca Albanese: the request for resignation invoked by the Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, results in a simple call for “sobriety” and “moderation” on the part of UN officials. Even if the position of Paris does not change. Indeed, through a spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay, he reiterates that the special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories should have the “dignity” to resign.
“I note that French diplomacy has changed its mind”, commented the Italian, specifying however that she would have expected an “apology for the harsh and unacceptable insults” received. It all began at the beginning of February, after a speech by Albanese at a video forum organized by Al-Jazeera in Qatar in which, among others, the leader of Hamas abroad Khaled Meshaal and the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi participated. In a passage of his speech on the West’s relations with Israel, Albanese spoke of a “common enemy of humanity”.
Words that the person concerned clarified 48 hours later on X: «The common enemy is the system that allowed the genocide in Palestine», she stated. But the sentence had already triggered the reaction of a group of French parliamentarians from the Macronian area who asked to take initiatives against the Italian official, accused of flirting with Hamas. A request accepted a few days later by the minister (and party comrade), Barrot, who on 11 February condemned the words of the UN rapporteur “unreservedly”, announcing in the chamber before the deputies that on 23 February he would ask for her resignation at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. But that wasn’t the case. According to what has been learned, the French ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Céline Jurgensen, did not explicitly ask for Albanese’s resignation, contenting herself with denouncing “repeated and extremely problematic statements”.
Hence the invitation to all United Nations special rapporteurs to demonstrate “sobriety, moderation and discretion, imposed by their mandate”. The spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry, Pascal Confavreux, declared to Politico that Barrot remains of the opinion that Albanese’s “repeated provocations” should lead her to leave office spontaneously. Speaking in parliament on February 18, Barrot – whose initiative had received the support of other European countries – once again condemned Albanese’s “long list of provocations”: not only the words about an alleged “enemy of humanity”, but also “the justification of 7 October”.
On an institutional level, the margin for maneuver of French diplomacy remained very limited: member states do not have mechanisms to force a UN special rapporteur to leave before the end of his mandate (Albanese’s mandate will expire in 2028), unless a specific resolution is adopted by the Human Rights Council. Hypothesis considered unlikely even in Paris. For her part, the interested party has made it known that she has no intention of leaving.