The Palestinian Association for Empowerment and Local Development—REFORM carried out a dialogue session entitled: "Challenges in judicial cases in Gender-Based Violence and Women's Rights Issues," in the presence of a group of young men and women GBV and women activists, participants of the “Insijam” Initiative, representatives of the Awqaf Directorate of North Hebron, Mr. Bilal Al-Mellah, a representative of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, Ms. Maysoon Al-Qawasmi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Women’s Activity Association, and representatives of REFORM at the Children Happiness Center.
The session’s facilitator, Mr. Mohammed Abu Radwan, introduced the speakers, the Association and the session’s aims, which coincides with REFORM’s vision of reducing gender-based violence and opening dialogue spaces between youth, decision-makers and representatives of civil society organisations to discuss issues that affect their participation and daily lives.
Then, the participants began to discuss the concept of judicial suffocation and violence and were asked about the work of the judicial system, and the most important obstacles the judiciary encounters that lead to lack of follow-up in cases of gender-based violence and women's rights.
Ms. Maysoon Al-Qawasmi addressed the challenges that women are facing as a result of the accumulation of cases in the Sharia courts, where there is an irregularity in giving women their privacy in the courts, in which the woman’s names and cases are called out loudly without respecting her privacy. Thus, women and their cases are not dealt with enough respect and privacy, as they go through very difficult feelings in various cases, whether it is custody, alimony, divorce, or others. Al-Qawasmi also stressed that the courts’ inability to quickly deal with cases of gender-based violence and the lack of privacy of women in their cases lead to women’s reluctance to resort to the judiciary, and instead resort to the tribal judiciary. This weakens the civil state and citizens' confidence in the official judiciary, not to mention the lack of safe spaces for women in the tribal system. Violence against women is essentially societal violence, practiced on the most vulnerable groups of children, the elderly and women.
Mr. Bilal Al-Mellah of the Independent Commission for Human Rights said: "The lack of women’s access to justice means that the case is still in the alleys and corridors of the court, which leads to weakening judicial law, but I believe that the actual judicial suffocation is the tribal instrument that may invalidate any law or court decision. This is very dangerous with regard to respecting the rule of law." He added that the solutions that must be worked on to reduce judicial suffocation lie in increasing the number of courts and judges specializing in Sharia cases and the role of community awareness through civil society organisations to respect the rule of law. However, he sees that the most important point is the allocation of a judiciary only specialized in family justice and the adoption of the Family Protection Law.
At the end of the meeting, the participants recommended: (1) the need to increase the number of specialized judges in family courts, (2) pressure the Ministry of Awqaf to use platforms to reduce gender-based violence, (3) reduce the violation of women's rights, (4) pressure the Ministry of Justice and the Palestinian judiciary to find competent bodies in family courts and (5) increase the number of judges in this field.
This session comes within the "Insijam" Initiative, implemented by The Palestinian Association for Empowerment and Local Development—REFORM within the “Naseej: Connecting Voices and Action to End Violence Against Women and Girls in the MENA Region” project, co-funded by Oxfam and the European Union. The Initiative aims to develop the capacities of participants in understanding the cultural and structural dimensions around societal and cultural contradictions that reduce gender-based violence and increase their skills to lead transformation processes in their communities and become agents of change in their communities. The initiative also seeks to empower and increase the participation of young women and men in local and national efforts to combat prevailing social norms and gender-based violence.
