Francesca Albanese is a human rights expert, legal scholar, and one of the world's most significant voices on Palestinian struggle.

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, she has spent years documenting what she and others, including the International Court of Justice, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have described as genocide. This has made her a target for the pro-Israel lobby.

She’s been sanctioned by the US government, threatened with arrest in Germany, and has faced repeated death threats for her unwavering commitment to calling out Israel's attrociies.

Her new book is called While the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine – its part memoir, told through the stories of ten people she’s met in her life and career as legal expert on Palestine, and a rallying cry for the world to stop the horrors that the international human rights system is supposed to prevent.

In this conversation, she reflects on her life and career spent face to face with human suffering, the moral imperative to mobilise against genocide, and where she finds hope.

"Documenting human rights violations in a time of genocide are excrutiating for the mind, for the body....I've been swalling death and horrible things that humans have done to other humans for over three years now.

"The genocide has changed my life forever. I don't think there is a way to repair it other than being good, to being caring towards myself, towards my loved ones...I have two young children. Preserving my sanity is something that goes hand in hand with being their mum.

"I know that if all good people on Earth did what they could, and what they know they can do, the world will heal sooner than we think."