UN Women's Palestine Country Office has supported a series of publications on Palestinian women’s access to justice. The first publication in this series, Access Denied (2014), examined the socio-political and legal context of access to justice for Palestinian women in the occupied West Bank. The study focused on the ordeals faced by Palestinian women in Area C and H2, which make up approximately 60 per cent of the West Bank and remain under the full civil and security control of Israel and the Israeli military. In these areas women are limited both physically and procedurally from accessing justice and security institutions.
Access Denied’s recommendations included the call for similar research on women’s access to justice be carried out in East Jerusalem, which is part of the occupied West Bank, but was unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1967 in contravention of international law. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem live in uncertainty of evictions, residency revocations, demolitions, movement restrictions and violent encounters with Israeli security forces and settler groups. Palestinian women and girls in East Jerusalem and their access to justice are limited by the interplay between on the one hand the discriminatory multiple legal regimes of the Israeli occupation and on the other the internal mechanisms of patriarchal control within Palestinian communities. In these circumstances women’s access to justice in East Jerusalem faces challenges that are unique not only to the occupied Palestinian territory, but to the world in general.
Schedule of Programming:
8:30-9:00
Coffee, tea and light breakfast
9:00-9:15
Opening: Maria Noel Vaeza, UN Women Director of Programming
9:15-10:00
Presentation of Report: Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Lead Researcher of Women’s Studies Centre (Jerusalem) research team and Lawrence D Biele Chair in Law, Institute of Criminology -Faculty of Law, School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
10:00-11:00
Discussants:
• Dr. Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Director, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, Faculty Director, Public Rights/Private Conscience Project, Columbia Law School
• Dr. Lila Abu Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science, Department of Anthropology/Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University
• Representative of Human Rights Watch TBC
• Representative of Independent Diplomat TBC
11:00-12:00
Group Discussion/Q & A Session
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to: Ms. Ahlam Qutub by e-mail at ahlam.qutub@unwomen.org.
If you require any disability accommodations to facilitate your visit, please contact Liz Boylan at eboyla@law.columbia.edu or 212.854.0167.