2023 was becoming a very integral year for REFORM’s impactful work. It had marked 11 years of empowering youth and promoting cohesion and diversity. We remained steadfast in our mission as we implemented our strategic directions for 2022-2025 and ensured to combat polarization and fragmentation, enhance the access of local and marginalized communities to justice and security, promote active citizenship practices and fostering youth and women engagement, advance outreach and targeting capabilities of REFORM and develop the organizational, administrative and financial structure of the Association.
REFORM was established by a group of young social and political activists in 2012. As an independent, secular, non-partisan Palestinian NGO, we are committed to affecting sustainable change through a combination of awareness-raising, capacity building, training and mentoring. This is all executed to contribute to REFORM’s vision of having a Palestinian society where everyone has the capacity to participate effectively with respected individual and collective rights and in turn, ensure pluralism in an independent Palestinian state. REFORM has proven its classification as the pioneering Palestinian association in social development through winning the Global Pluralism Award. Among 200 submissions from 60 countries, REFORM was selected as one of three winners of this award for bridging the divides between groups in Palestine and advancing the inclusion of marginalised youth, including refugees, those living in C areas and other hard-to-reach groups. This recognition was profound as it increased REFORM’s work visibility and allowed us to represent Palestine internationally.
Our work was reaching its pinnacle of success. War on Gaza further propelled the long history of occupation, expulsion and systemic injustice. The besieging of the Gaza Strip over the past two decades has been displayed through the constant injustice and we at REFORM have witnessed it as we implemented our own activities in Gaza. We must acknowledge the international community’s ignorance of the demands for civilian protection which constituted the international community’s clear abandonment of its values. The Palestinian leadership’s consistent appeals to the United Nations for international protection of the Palestinian population were utterly neglected, which allowed for further deterioration to occur. There is a chronic state of frustration and anxiety, approaching a point of no return.
REFORM has taken the immediate initiative to ensure any humanitarian aid possible is being executed. REFORM managed to adapt all projects to the current situation by adjusting any activities, if necessary, and prioritising the safety of all beneficiaries. New actions have been designed such as supporting Gazan women and children who were stranded in the West Bank, as well as the deported workers. REFORM believes that threatening to suspend Palestinian development aid will only foster a growing sense of distrust in the international community, which engenders an environment of polarisation, endangers Palestinian citizens’ survival, well-being and safety. During this time, it has become REFORM’s mission to support the vulnerability of the marginalised and less fortunate populations and increase awareness on the situation. An intervention for this has been the production of daily infographics disseminated on all social media platforms which display real-time updates on all relevant statistics. The information is validated by the Palestinian Ministry of Health and UNRWA and other international organisations and UN agencies. An emergency project was also driven and implemented by the urgent need to provide immediate and comprehensive support to Palestinians affected by the current crises in Gaza.
REFORM has displayed proactive and adaptive capabilities to shift all interventions to the current crises by ensuring protection of its staff, beneficiaries and delivering aid and awareness as much as possible. Although 2023 contained unprecedented circumstances, it was a year that showed REFORM’s unrelenting mission to promote pluralism and bridge the gaps between social components based on age, gender, political affiliation and geography. Thank you for believing in our work. We aim to take the lessons we have learned in this year and evolve even further. Thank you for being our partners and supporters in this journey.
REFORM is expressing an unwavering commitment to peace and justice and call upon humanity to save Palestinians by calling for stopping war on Gaza.
