Ref: 135/2021

Date: 25 November 2021

Time: 10:00 GMT

On the 25th of November of each year, we celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and it marks the first day of the United Nations’ 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which lasts until 10 December.  This campaign, designated by the United Nations Secretary-General as “Orange the World: END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN NOW!” was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (Resolution 54/134), to promote measures set forth to prevent crime; as well as, criminal justice measures that aim at eliminating violence against women and girls.

Annually, Palestinian women and girls in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) celebrate this occasion under exceptional circumstances, most prominently is the Israeli occupation and its systamtic violations against women.  During the latest Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip in May 2021, the Israeli Occuation Forces (IOF) killed 38 women and injuryed 277 others.  Meanwhile, in the West Bank, IOF killed 5 women this year.  Even more, women’s suffering under occupation is aggrevated as their sons and husbands are subjected to either killing, injury, or arrest by IOF.

Women are exposed to arrest campaigns by IOF, as 154 women were arrested by Israeli forces in 2021 according to statisics published by the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.  Meanwhile, 33 female prisoners are still in the Israeli Damon Prison, which lacks the basic needs for human life and where they face tightened measures and  suffer from mental and physical stress/pressure techniques.

In terms of the internal situation in Palestine, PCHR documented 10 deaths this year among women (4 in the West Bank and 5 in the Gaza Strip, in different societal violence crimes; one of which was against a woman who was murdered on ground of so-called “family honor.” Also, 3 girls under 18 were killed by a family member in the Gaza Strip.

The latest of those crimes was on Monday, 22 November, in Kafr Ne’ma village, west of Ramallah, when 30-year-old Sabrin Khweirah was stabbed to death by her husband; she was the mother of four children, the eledest of whom is only 9 years old.  It should be noted that Khweirah previously complained to the Family Proection Deparment about being exposed to maltreatment along with her children, but she returned to her home fearing that her children would get harmed.

Palestinian women and girls still suffer from gender-based violence, which lately increased due to the outbreak of coronavirus and the accompanying deterioration of the living, social and economic conditions, particularly in the Gaza Strip.  Women exposed to violence, particualy women with disabilities, suffer due to the poor services provided to them, particularly in the Gaza Strip as the National Transfer System for Abused Women No. 18/2013 is not applicable, considering it as one of the tools that stress the importance of partnership between the sectors providing services for the abused women and girls through different mechanisms.  Moreover, women also suffer from weak infrastructure of the service organizations as there are only few number of governmental organizations available, including the safe houses for the protection women that are of limited access to financial resources. There is only one governmental safe house/shelter in the Gaza Strip and 3 others in the West Bank.  The Gaza Strip also lacks any safe shelters for chidren, males or females who are victims of domestic violence.

Moreover, early marriage is one of the negative phenomena in Palestine. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the percentage of females under 18 years, who got married in 2019, was 19.3% out of total females who got married in the same year: 19% in the West Bank and 19.9% in the Gaza Strip.

It is worth noting that the Palestinian division is deemed as one of challenges facing Palestinian women, as it continues to hinder legislative progress in terms of passing new laws that are just to women.

PCHR reiterates its support for women wherever they are and highlights their extraordinary humanitarian suffering under the occupation and the political division, and during this pandemic. In As such, PCHR:

1. Calls upon the international community to put pressure on Israel in order to lift the closure imposed on the Gaza Strip, respect human rights and abide by the principles of international humanitarian law and international human rights law towards the Palestinian people as a people under occupation.
2. Calls upon the Human Rights Council and contracting bodies of international conventions, especially CEDAW, to open investigations into Israel’s serious or systemic violations of Palestinian women’s rights.
3. Calls for approving the “Family Protection from Violence” Act, which became as an an ursgent necessity in light of the increase in the number of women and girls killed, as it maintains social cohesion and constitutes a deterrent to violence.perpetrators.
4. Calls upon Palestinian Government  in the Gaza Strip to activate the National Transformation Program for women, including women with disabilities, exposed to violence in order to protect and rehabilitate them by supporting the legal, health and social sectors in order to ensure the provision of gender-equitable services on the basis of complementarity, distribution of roles and professional partnership.
5. Calls upon Palestinian police and public prosecution to exert more efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of domestic violence crimes, and to take all necessary legal measures against them without regard to any excuses or justifications.
6. Calls on Palestinian Government  to create clear mechanisms to protect children, especially girls, including the establishment of Al-Aman Shelter for Women.
7. Calls for raising the age of marriage to 18 in the Gaza Strip, as in the West Bank, in order to put an end to the phenomenon of early marriage.
8. Calls for amending national legislation, in particular the Palestinian Penal Code, in order to bring it into line with international conventions that Palestine acceded to, especially CEDAW.