Joachim Paul, the Director of the Middle East Office at the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, emphasized the need to focus on and support divorced women in resolving their problems and integrating them into society.

Paul discussed the needs of divorced women, considered a marginalized group requiring assistance and support, with a number of divorced women affiliated with the “Women Forward Forum” project funded by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He expressed his admiration for the enthusiasm of divorced women to join the first project of its kind in the Gaza Strip, which aims to rehabilitate them through training.

The divorced women received specialized training in gender and self-empowerment, women’s family rights, and domestic violence. They are also being trained in rapid participatory research for the purpose of studying “Identifying the Needs of Divorced Women in the Gaza Strip.”

For her part, Ms. Zeinab Al-Ghunaimi, Director of The Center for Women’s Legal Researches, Counselling and Protection (CWLRCP), welcomed the Director of the Middle East Office at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, thanking the foundation for its efforts in supporting women’s institutions and centers in the Gaza Strip. She highlighted the marginalization of women’s roles in society and the weakness of laws that still oppress their family rights. She explained that the “Women Forward Forum” project aims to create a permanent forum for divorced women under the name “Women Forward,” which will continue its work within the framework of a woman-to-woman program within the forum. The project also seeks to enhance divorced women’s self-confidence and self-esteem, raise legal awareness among divorced women to enable them to protect their rights, defend the rights of divorced women before national courts and solve their legal problems through the center’s legal advice unit, work to reintegrate divorced women into society to improve their living conditions, assist in raising the level of awareness and scientific and professional skills of divorced women in cooperation with NGOs working in this field to help them create job opportunities for a number of them to alleviate poverty, and contribute to raising public awareness towards the recognition of women’s rights equal to men’s rights in family issues.