Today, The Center for Women’s Legal Researches, Counselling and Protection (CWLRCP) inaugurated the “Women Forward Forum” project, which aims to support divorced women, particularly young women, and reintegrate them into society.

The project, funded by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, also aims to establish a permanent forum for divorced women under the name “Women Forward,” which will continue its work within a woman-to-woman program inside the forum. The project 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. It also aims to work on reintegrating divorced women into society to improve their living conditions, assist in raising the level of scientific and professional awareness and skills of divorced women in cooperation with local organizations 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 recognizing women’s rights as equal to men’s rights in family matters.

During an introductory meeting today, attended by (20) women’s and local organizations and (40) divorced women, Ms. Zeinab Al-Ghunaimi, Director of the Center, said that this project is a new and unique idea that comes to support divorced women and stand by them so that they can live a normal life like other citizens in society. She explained that the project idea came as a result of studies and research carried out by the center and the results of studies carried out by other women’s organizations and civil society, which indicated the continued occurrence of divorce cases and the aggravation of problems resulting from this during the last five years due to the political and economic circumstances experienced by the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, in terms of increasing rates of poverty as a result of the siege and the ongoing war, which generated psychological pressures and countless family problems that contributed to the spread of family disintegration and the increasing numbers of young divorced women in particular.