Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, has welcomed Spain’s decision to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza.

Albanese said she hoped the move by Spain was the beginning of more Western countries “taking similar actions” to “stand on the right side of history”.

“Words of condemnation are meaningless without action. In fact, decades of mere words have allowed Israel to escalate its lawlessness towards the Palestinians into genocide,” she wrote on social media.