Date: August 6, 2017

The Center for Women’s Legal Researches, Counselling and Protection (CWLRCP) is conducting a continuous series of field workshops in the five governorates of the Gaza Strip, as part of the “Protecting and Empowering Women in the Gaza Strip” project. The project is funded by the United Nations Humanitarian Fund projects, with generous support from Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, and will run between June and September 2017. Professor Wafaa Helles, the project coordinator, indicated that the Center seeks, through the implementation of the project’s activities, to achieve its main goal: improving access to comprehensive protection services based on human rights standards for women and girls who are victims and survivors of violence in the Gaza Strip. This includes providing legal support to women and girls who are victims of violence (divorced women, widows, displaced women, women with disabilities, housewives) in marginalized areas of the Gaza Strip, and providing multi-purpose services to women and girls who are victims and survivors of violence (psychological, social, and health support). She pointed out that the project includes the implementation of (63) field workshops, including (30) workshops implemented in civil society organizations, targeting women and men to educate them about women’s family rights (marriage, divorce, inheritance), and (8) workshops implemented in institutions specialized in disabilities targeting women and men with special needs, educating them about the rights of persons with disabilities in the laws in force in the Gaza Strip. Additionally, (25) workshops will be implemented in schools (primary, preparatory, secondary) to educate students about sexual violence by psychologists and social workers. She explained that work has been done on the implementation of field workshops in civil society organizations in the five governorates of the Gaza Strip, totaling (30) workshops, which aim to target (900) women and men to educate them about women’s family rights (marriage, divorce, inheritance), and to discuss the life impacts on them as a result of the continuous power and water outages, in addition to discussing and presenting the most important political changes on the Palestinian scene, which are represented by the interruption of salaries and the suspension of medical transfers from the Gaza Strip. She stressed that the most important feature of these workshops is that they were implemented in areas that institutions were reaching for the first time, where they were implemented in citizens’ diwans and homes in cooperation and coordination with institutions, in order to reach new groups in marginalized and border areas.