Ref: 48/2023

Date: 29 August 2023

On Monday, 28 August 2023, the Women’s Unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) organized a panel discussion on “Challenges of Judicial Notifications” as part of the advocacy campaign: “Alimony is My Right”. The panel discussion was attended by representatives of the High Shari’a Judicial Council, governmental bodies, and civil society organizations (CSOs) for women and child rights.

Majidah Shehadah, Deputy Director of Women’s Unit at PCHR, inaugurated the panel discussion and welcomed the attendees, saying it is part of the advocacy campaign “Alimony is My Right”, which aims at empowering and helping women to obtain their alimony payments as stipulated by law. She added that the idea of the panel discussion came out of the Women Unit’s work and legal representation of women before Sharia courts; during which, it has monitoredthe challenges of delayed judicial notifications and how they hinder swift justice delivery, inflict harm on women while collecting their alimony, and negatively affect their lives and human dignity. Shehadah affirmed depriving women and children of their alimony payments means they lose an essential source of protection that shall be provided to them.

Ghada al-Nazli, lawyer at the Women’s Unit, made an intervention and reviewedthe challenges of judicial notifications, including not delivering the hearing notifications or receiving them days after the hearing. She added there is another challenge about the notifiers not providing a correct legal statement on some of the judicial notifications. Al-Nazli called for identifying the causes of these challenges and finding solutions to them in order to reduce the lengthy litigation and lift harm inflicted on women.

Mr. Yousef al-Shanti, Director General of the Sharia Courts, stressed the importance of this discussion, adding that the Shari’a Judicial Council held several training courses for the new notifiers, but constantly changing them prevent them from gaining the sufficient legal experience. Al-Shanti also talked about the mechanism used by the High Shari’a Judicial Council to follow up complaints related to judicial notifications as well as the council’s assessment of the quality and speed of judicial notifications.

Moreover, representatives of the company responsible for delivering the judicial notifications reviewed the obstacles facing the notifiers in field, most notably the latter’s inexperience of judicial notifications in Shari’a courts. They concluded that they are fully willing to implement the concluding recommendations of the panel discussion.

At the end of the panel, there was a considerable discussion, during which the participants made the following recommendations:

1. The need to circulate the complaint mechanism related to judicial notifications at the Internal Control Department in the Sharia Courts in order to follow them up with the company responsible for the notifications and delivering them as soon as possible.
2. Appointing notifiers to be exclusively responsible for the judicial notifications at the Shari’a Courts.
3. Developing a computerized program through which judicial notifications can be followed without any delay, similar to the civil courts.
4. Civil society organizations shall continue to monitor the implementation of these recommendations.