Ref: 60/2021

Date: 28 November 2021

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) held last week awareness sessions to promote youth role in encouraging citizens to participate as candidates and voters in the local and general elections, within the “We Want Elections” project that is implemented by PCHR in cooperation with the Central Elections Commission (CEC) in the Gaza Strip’s governorates and funded by the European Union (EU).  As part of the project, 60 training sessions will be held, targeting 1200 young men and women, including university students and citizens living in the marginalized areas.

Last week, PCHR held 14 training sessions across the governorates, where 300 male and female participants attended, including 200 females.

The project aims at enhancing the electoral process in the West Bank and the Gaza strip and urges citizens to participate in the elections through raising their awareness.  The project also includes an awareness and motivating campaign to encourage citizens to participate as candidates and voters in the general and local elections, including campaigns on social media titled as “We Want Elections” with posters and hashtags.  The project also includes motivating videos and banners.

The training sessions tackled several main topics, including the importance of elections and citizens’ right to participate in elections as candidates or voters. The sessions also addressed elections conditions/ requirements and if available in Palestine, including transparency, impartiality, secret ballot, and periodicity of elections. They also talked about women’s right to participate in elections in accordance with the law.

These sessions come to encourage citizens to participate in elections as the participants in the awareness sessions showed great interaction and called for holding local and general elections to participate in them as soon as possible.