Monthly Bulletin March 2026: Francesca Albanese’s report “Torture and Genocide”, rising settler violence and displacement, and other topics

Contents

1. Settler violence displaces more Palestinians in 2026 than in all of 2025

2. Discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinian women and girls

3. “Torture and Genocide”- Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s new report

4. Humanitarian situation, restrictions to aid in Gaza and new UNRWA leadership

I. Settler violence displaces more Palestinians in 2026 than in all of 2025

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), nearly 1,700 Palestinians have been displaced due to settler attacks and access restrictions in less than three months in 2026, a number that “already surpassed the total of the whole of 2025”. On 19 March, UNRWA Commissioner-General denounced the impunity of Israeli settlers’ violence, reporting that over 1,000 Palestinians had been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, almost a quarter of whom were children. The issue of settler violence was also raised by the Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Ramiz Alakbarov, at the UN Security Council. In his briefing on 24 March, Alakbarov condemned “the relentless Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank”, the heightened level of violence, and “displacement, demolitions, evictions and crippling movement and access restrictions” affecting the Palestinian people. “Daily settler-related attacks escalated, often in the presence of Israeli forces, resulting in casualties, property damage and displacement in Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank,” Alakbarov said.

Simultaneously, presenting a report to the UN Human Rights Council on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem, the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that “Israeli authorities directed, participated in, or enabled settler violence.” Subsequently, the Council, by a recorded vote of 34 in favour, 3 against and 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution reaffirming that Israeli settlements “are illegal under international law, and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace, and to economic and social development.”

More details and related content

1. Israel’s settlement expansion drives mass displacement in West Bank – OHCHR Report (17 March)

2. UNRWA Commissioner-General: Over 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 2023 (19 March)

3. Draft resolution: Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan (A/HRC/61/L.36) (23 March)

4. Draft resolution: Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (A/HRC/61/L.37) (23 March)

5. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights updates the Human Rights Council on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the occupied Syrian Golan (24 March)

6. Thirty-seventh report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) (24 March)

7. UNRWA Commissioner-General on the West Bank: Violence by Israeli settlers continues unabated (25 March)

8. UN and NGOs urge the Israeli authorities to stop forced evictions in East Jerusalem (26 March)

9. OCHA: Settler violence displaces more Palestinians in 2026 than in all of 2025 (27 March)

II. Discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinian women and girls

 

On 18 March, the UN Palestinian Rights Committee held a meeting on “Discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinian women and girls under Israeli occupation: Justice demands accountability.” In her opening remarks Mona Al-Khalil, Minister for Women’s Affairs of the State of Palestine, stressed that Palestinian women remained “fundamental pillars of resilience” and their empowerment one of the “key elements of Palestinian society’s recovery”. The meeting examined how Israeli occupation policies affect Palestinian women’s rights, particularly their access to justice and essential services. Civil society speakers highlighted how conflict, displacement and legal barriers disproportionately affect women in Gaza and the West Bank, stressing the need to end impunity for human rights violations.

The meeting was held on the margins of the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at United Nations Headquarters. However, four of the participants spoke by video from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, due to a combination of United States visa restrictions on Palestinian passports, and the unpredictable airspace in the Middle East. Further details about the event are available on the Committee’s website.

More details and related content:

1. UN experts condemn ‘Board of Peace’, call for a reparative, rights-based approach to reconstruction in Gaza (2 March)

2. UNRWA Commissioner-General on International Women’s Day: Palestine refugee women must be part of conversations shaping their future (8 March)

3. International Women’s Day: In Gaza, Hajar continues serving amid loss (8 March)

4. International Women’s Day: Soumaya stitches strength in Gaza through UNRWA’s embroidery centre (8 March)

5. International Women’s Day: In Gaza, Salma signs a path forward for women (8 March)

6. Justice for Palestinian women demands end to occupation, reparations, accountability, experts tell UN Palestinian Rights Committee (18 March)

7. 427th Committee Meeting on the margins of the 70th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women (18 March)

8. UN experts: state-backed terror squads at the forefront of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and annexation policy in the West Bank (19 March)

9. Palestinian women bearing the brunt of occupation, violence, and blockade – Remarks by Ajith Sunghay, Head of UN Human Rights in the OPT (30 March)

III. “Torture and Genocide”- Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s new report

Israel’s systematic torture of Palestinians, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, in her new report to the UN Human Rights Council. “Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” she stated. “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 policies imposed by senior Israeli officials, including the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, have institutionalised torture, collective punishment and manifestly dehumanising conditions of detention. The report argues that torture is not an isolated abuse but has become “an integral component of the settler-colonial genocide perpetrated by Israel, functioning as an instrument of annihilatory violence directed at the Palestinians as a people.” One of the report’s central warnings is that “genocide has become the ultimate form of torture: continuous, generational, and collective.”

More details and related content:

1. UN experts condemn ‘Board of Peace’, call for a reparative, rights-based approach to reconstruction in Gaza (2 March)

2. ICJ: Paraguay files a declaration of intervention (South Africa v. Israel) (4 March)

3. UN experts warn against the irreversible ‘de-Palestinisation’ of Jerusalem (6 March)

4. OHCHR Palestine: Human Rights Bulletin – Reporting period (4 – 9 March 2026) (10 March)

5. ICJ: Declarations of intervention in the proceedings filed by the Netherlands and by Iceland under Article 63 of the Statute of the Court (South Africa v. Israel) (12 March)

6. ICJ: Declarations of intervention in the proceedings filed by Namibia, the United States of America, Hungary and Fiji (South Africa v. Israel) (13 March)

7. OHCHR: Alarm over pattern of unlawful killings with two Palestinian families killed (15 March)

8. UNICEF: Two young siblings killed in Tammun, West Bank, as child casualties continue (17 March)

9. Torture and genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 – Advance edited version (A/HRC/61/71) (23 March)

10. UN expert Francesca Albanese warns torture has become ‘state doctrine’ in Israel, making prisons instruments of genocide and torture (23 March)

11. Draft resolution: Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice (A/HRC/61/L.35) (23 March)

12. UN experts demand immediate release of Dr Abu Safiya after reports of “severe torture” (24 March)

13. Revised draft resolution: Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice (A/HRC/61/L.35/Rev.1) (26 March)

14. High Commissioner for Human Rights Türk warns against Israel’s legislative steps targeting Palestinians in violation of international law (31 March)

IV. Humanitarian situation, restrictions to aid in Gaza and new UNRWA leadership

On 3 March, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced that the Kerem Shalom crossing had reopened for the entry of fuel and humanitarian assistance into Gaza and remains the only operational crossing for humanitarian and commercial supplies to date. The closure of other crossings continued to hinder in particular aid delivery to northern Gaza. On 5 March, OCHA reported that a recent assessment of displacement sites had found that only 11% of nearly 1,000 sites have communal lighting, while open sewage was observed in more than half of all sites surveyed. On 11 March, OCHA further warned of health system failing and increasing risk of infectious diseases at displacement sites in Gaza, and of continued restrictions to aid operations. On 18 March, OCHA raised the alarm of depleting humanitarian supplies since the regional escalation began.

On 31 March, the UN Secretary-General designated Christian Saunders as Acting Commissioner-General of UNRWA. In his farewell message to staff, the outgoing UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini underscored the “Agency’s outstanding work and the unacceptable price paid by staff and the communities” they serve, recalling the “more than 390 colleagues” killed in Gaza and the many others “injured, detained, tortured”. He praised the staff for their courage that made possible to deliver core services and emergency assistance to those most in need despite exceptional constraints.

More details and related content:

1. Updates by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

   • Humanitarian movements suspended as crossings into Gaza close (2 March)

   • Karem Shalom crossing re-opens for aid, fuel amid stepped up regional tensions (3 March)

   • Aid deliveries into Gaza resume, but flow remains insufficient (4 March)

   • Critical aid reaches civilians amidst access constraints (5 March)

   • Humanitarians operate under fire while providing lifesaving services (6 March)

   • Crossing closures continue to hinder delivery of life-saving aid (9 March)

   • Fuel shortage hamper aid efforts (10 March)

   • Health system failing, increasing infectious disease risk (11 March)

   • Striking, shelling generates more civilian casualties (12 March)

   • Humanitarian movements denied, blocking supplies from reaching Gazans in need (13 March)

   • UN urges protection of Palestinians, calls for perpetrators of killings to be brought to justice (16 March)

   • Aid workers deliver amid tightening restrictions (18 March)

   • OCHA Humanitarian Situation Report (19 March)

   • Rafah crossing reopens today, medical evacuations possible (19 March)

   • Humanitarian operations face continued restrictions (24 March)

   • Conditions worsening as access stalls (25 March)

   • Heavy rains flood shelters as civilians remain under fire (26 March)

   • Occupied Palestinian territory Humanitarian Fund Annual Report 2025 (27 March)

   • NGO petition, new restrictions threaten humanitarian operations (30 March)

1. Updates by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

   • Watch Susan Sarandon: Together we are UNRWA (1 March)

   • Commissioner-General on Gaza: Once again, Israel is renewing its ban on supplies entering Gaza (2 March)

   • Commissioner-General: access to education is under attack in plain sight (3 March)

   • Spain’s €1 million support helps women and children with disabilities in the occupied West Bank (4 March)

   • Letter from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to the President of the United Nations General Assembly Annalena Baerbock (17 March)

   • Commissioner-General: Over 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 2023 (19 March)

   • Reopened Centre for Visually Impaired Children in Gaza brings hope to Mohammed (19 March)

   • Farewell Message from the Commissioner-General to UNRWA staff (31 March)

   • UN Secretary-General designates Christian Saunders as UNRWA Acting Commissioner-General from 1 July 2026 until further notice (31 March)

1. WHO Occupied Palestinian Territory Flash Update (4 March)

2. UNFPA: Child marriages surge in Gaza as war tightens grip on girls’ futures (4 March)

3. WHO: Braving conflict to protect children from polio in Gaza: women at the frontline of the response (8 March)

4. General Assembly decides to appoint Chile as a member of the UN Palestinian Rights Committee (10 March)

5. IOM OPT Emergency Response: Activity Update #53 (1 – 28 February 2026) (12 March)

6. WFP Palestine Emergency Response- External Situation Report 85 – Reporting period: 1-15 March 2026 (19 March)

7. FAO scales up conditional cash assistance to 1000 more farmers, calls for liberalization of private sector imports of agricultural inputs in Gaza (31 March)

The Annual Compilation of UN Reports on the Question of Palestine (2025) brings together key UN reports, briefings and technical assessments published in 2025. Prepared by UN entities and its affiliated agencies, it reflects the breadth of work across political, legal, humanitarian, human rights, social, and economic dimensions, highlighting developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. All reports are available on the UNISPAL website.

The Annual Compilation of UN Resolutions on the Question of Palestine (2025) presents selected resolutions, decisions and voting records adopted in 2025 by the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and Human Rights Council. Prepared by DPR, the compilation highlights the ongoing work of the UN system in addressing the question of Palestine. All resolutions are available on the UNISPAL website.

The United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People issued its Quarterly Newsletter No. 27, covering the period January-March 2026. The newsletter provides an overview of the Committee’s activities, including meetings, outreach, and developments related to the question of Palestine.

The Bulletin can be found in the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL) on the Internet at: https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/monthly-bulletin/

Disclaimer: The texts and links cited in this Monthly Bulletin have been reproduced in their original form. The Division for Palestinian Rights is consequently not responsible for the views, positions or discrepancies contained in these texts.