Ref: 33/2023

Date: 21 June 2023

On Tuesday, 20 June 2023, the Women’s Unit at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) organized a workshop to launch advocacy campaign: “Alimony is My Right” at Phoenix Hotel in Gaza City. The workshop was attended by representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, human rights and women rights organizations defending child and women rights.

Majidah Shehadah, Deputy Director of Women’s Unit at PCHR, inaugurated the workshop and welcomed the attendees, indicating that this workshop is to declare an advocacy campaign titled: “Alimony is My Right”. Shehadah emphasized that this campaign aims at empowering and helping women to benefit from the alimony payments codified in law. She added that the idea of this campaign came through the Women Unit’s monitoring of the harm inflicted on women, who benefit from the legal aid program. She added that although these women have obtained rulings on alimony and their execution, they cannot get any of these payments, negatively affecting their lives and human dignity.

Ms. Nadia Abu Nahlah, Member of PCHR’s Board of Directors, presented an overview of PCHR’s role in supporting women, child and human rights for more than 20 years, as PCHR has paid special attention to women’s issues. Abu Nahlah added that laws applicable in the Gaza Strip do not provide for gender justice and that they blatantly violate women’s rights and discriminate against them. Abu Nahlah emphasized that women and girls are most vulnerable to the negative effects of the political and social crises, indicating that the greatest obstacle is the Palestinian political division which has suspended the role of the Legislative Council in amending the laws on such matters.

Lawyer Aya Al-Wakeel, a researcher at the Women’s Unit, presented a factsheet on “Challenges of Alimony Collection at Sharia Courts”, attributing the delayed collection of alimony payments to the delay in judicial notifications and weak efficiency and experience of notifiers, leading to repetition of the notifications several times and thereby delaying collection of alimony payments. Al-Wakeel also talked about the problem of poor resources of the Palestinian Maintenance Fund (PMF) in the Gaza Strip that threatens its functioning, calling for consolidating efforts to solve these problems in order to ensure alimony collection and preserve women and children’s dignity.

At the end of the workshop, there was a deep discussion, where the attendees appreciated PCHR’s efforts to launch such a campaign that would alleviate the burden on women, stressing that finding solutions to such problems requires that all those working on women and children’s issues and their rights unify efforts, face challenges and find mechanisms to solve them.

At the end of the meeting, the following recommendations were concluded:

1. The need to consolidate efforts to ensure alimony collection as it forces some women to give up their children custody.
2. Reassignment of the judicial police to deliver judicial notifications at Sharia Courts.
3. Adherence to the fact that alimony is a privileged debt and to implement this when the alimony payments are disbursed.
4. Using modern means of communication between the sharia courts and the authorities responsible for alimony collection, including police apparatus, banks, and others.
5. Find solutions to enhance and increase the resources of the Palestinian Maintenance Fund.