by H. Patricia Hynes February 25, 2026

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and two Gaza Doctors, Dr. Hassam Abu Safiya and Dr. Sara Al-Saqqa, have been nominated for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. Nearly 300 qualified proposers from 33 countries signed the petition, including countries from the West and the Global South.  

More than anyone today, they deserve this prestigious peace prize for laboring with inestimable integrity and courage to gain a Palestinian-led peace in Gaza and the West Bank amidst a genocide like no other, perpetrated by Israel. For Albanese’s unrelenting and unsparing critique of Israel’s genocide and the 63 countries she identified profiting from it by selling weapons and weapon parts, and other economic deals with Israel, Francesca Albanese stands head and shoulders with the great Nobel Prize women.  Women such as Jane Addams who won the prize for her persistent, lifelong dedication to international peace beginning with World War 1; Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental, political and women’s rights activist, who founded the Green Belt Movement; and 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai who risked her life in confronting the Pakistani Taliban’s suppression of girls and championed the equal right of girls all over the world to education.