UN special rapporteur praises SA as a place of respite

UN special rapporteur and human rights activist Francesca Albanese described being in South Africa as “an intense beautiful journey” that had given her some respite.

“It has been such a relief to be among people who feel it, who you do not have to explain what apartheid is”. 

She made the remarks during the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, delivered at the Sandton Convention Centre, on Saturday under the theme “Enhancing Peace and Global Cooperation.”

Groote Kerk and the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign also held a public gathering in a packed church on Sunday, where Albanese addressed the crisis in international law and explored strategies to strengthen solidarity efforts in the face of failing international accountability frameworks.  

“Apartheid in this country didn’t start in 1948 other than on paper. In fact every settler colonial regime is quintessentially apartheid, it's quintessentially segregationist because the segregation allows to confine, to steal the resources and control. This is why it's not that the crimes against the Palestinians in the land that was once called Palestine even on the maps, started in 1948,” Albanese said on Sunday. 

During her lecture she noted: “With nowhere to flee and nothing to return to excruciating suffering is widespread, systematic and by design. Even during the fragile ceasefire, it continues. The century long slow colonisation of Palestine has accelerated in a vicious campaign of destruction where the erasure of the indigenous people is the end goal. This is a textbook case of genocide. It unfolds piece by piece, decade by decade, crime after crime. The occupation of Palestine must be understood as a project of broader domination.”

With Gaza's education system shattered by the two years of gruelling war, Albanese’s colleague, UNICEF's regional director Edouard Beigbeder says he fears for a "lost generation" of children wandering ruined streets with nothing to do.

"This is the third year that there has been no school," said Beigbeder, the UN agency's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. He made the remarks during an interview with AFP in Jerusalem after returning from the Palestinian territory.

"If we don't start a real transition for all children in February, we will enter a fourth year. And then we can talk about a lost generation."

"It is impossible to imagine 80 percent of a territory that is completely flattened out or destroyed," he added.

Cape Times