Radio episode: gender-based violence and how youth see the ways to confront it

Within the continuous efforts Pal-Think exerts in spreading and strengthening youth's awareness in Palestinian society, Pal-Think for Strategic Studies carried out a radio episode titled “Gender-based violence and the mechanism of facing it from a youth perspective”, with the participation of the coordinator of the Hayat Centre for the Protection and Empowerment of Families, Tahani Qasem, and the two members of the civic-education body at Pal-Think, Hadeel Ahel and Aya Ashour — during the programme “Youth Dialogues”, broadcast every Sunday at noon on Zaman radio, within the activities of the project “Civic Education”, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which aims to strengthen the values of democracy and human rights among university students.

The institution's projects coordinator, Sally al-Sammak, opened her talk during a telephone intervention by affirming “Pal-Think's” belief in Palestinian youth. She said: “Pal-Think focuses in its programmes on developing the capacities of youth of both sexes in the issues of democracy and human rights through targeting university students directly, and seeks through its activities and programmes to empower youth to become more able to express their issues and the problems that face them in society, and to give them space to put forward their opinions and aspirations.”

She pointed to the importance of civic education's role in strengthening citizenship, human rights, building civil society, and political participation, which is the foundation of the democratic process.

She concluded by saying: “The elections were supposed to be held at this time, but they were postponed to the coming period, and this is a golden opportunity for youth to become more acquainted with the importance of the elections and to engage more in lobbying and advocacy campaigns to demand their rights democratically.”

For her part, the civic-education body member Hadeel Ahel mentioned that the project targeted 25 young men and women who were trained intensively on the issues of human rights, gender, good governance, and rights issues related to the Palestinian legal system.

She added: “Pal-Think directed us to network with the three universities: Al-Azhar, Palestine, and Gaza, to target the students, and we worked also with a number of civil society institutions such as the Fares al-Arab institution and the Palestinian Women Graduates Association. There was very effective communication between us as youth and Pal-Think and the universities and local institutions, and we were in constant session to discuss the developments passing during the carrying out of the awareness sessions”

She continued: “At the beginning we would find the students astonished at how a young man or woman of twenty could give a workshop on a Palestinian rights topic — and this opened new intellectual horizons for us and proved that youth are fully conscious of the Palestinian condition and what the Palestinian cause suffers, and the problems that face civil society.”

“Ahel” pointed out that they presented a set of workshops on several important topics such as human rights, democracy, gender justice, and advocacy, and decided to carry out radio episodes to target the widest possible audience of youth.

She affirmed culture's important role in change, and said: “Personally, I believe the cultural process is an important part of change, especially with the retreat of the cultural condition in Palestine for political and economic circumstances. The educational process through social media, workshops, and the media is very important because it attracts and targets a large category, and helps us shed light on issues and help in solving them. Raising youth's awareness is very important through several available means.”

“Ahel” added: “At a time when the proportion of Palestinian women who have been subjected to violence has reached 29.9 per cent, we find there is a plain shortcoming from the official bodies toward the issue of violence against women, and we do not see gender-based violence and the mechanisms of facing it in the educational curricula.”

She concluded, saying: “The Palestinian Ministry of Culture must allocate financial sums to carry out workshops and raise awareness toward gender-based violence, in tandem with the media shedding light on the issue, and the exploitation of social media sites to carry out lobbying and advocacy campaigns.”

For her part, the civic-education body member Aya Ashour said: “We were all young, and we obtained intensive trainings in several fields to found lobbying and advocacy campaigns and put them forward from a youth perspective. If I discuss those trainings with my peers of the same age category, I will have contributed to finding solutions around these issues. And this qualifies us to be leaders in society.”

She affirmed the high degree of cooperation within the team, as they would exchange the training and educational materials and constantly discuss rights and gender topics. The reason behind that was the ease of communication and persuasion among them, they all being of the youth category.

What are the causes of violence in Palestinian society? “Ashour” answers by saying: the man's view of himself as possessing authority to control the woman, upbringing and the implanting of wrong concepts in children, alongside customs and traditions.

She pointed out that they faced difficulties embodied in some people's rejection of their work in spreading equality between the sexes, in addition to the unavailability of sufficient scientific research published in Arabic on the search sites.

As for the coordinator of the Hayat Centre for the Protection and Empowerment of Families, Tahani Qasem, she traced, during a telephone intervention, the causes of violence in the Gaza Strip back to cultural causes embodied in the prevailing masculine view, the bad economic situation, the social situation based on reserve toward women, in addition to the legal system incapable of protecting them.

She said: “The way to treat the issues of violence is a serious stand by the officials and the President in the first degree to enact laws that protect women especially and families generally, reform the social system, amend women's situation and standing, and reform the legal system and the bad economic situation that casts its shadows over Palestinian families. And by the way, many women are subjected to violence because of severe poverty, unemployment, want, and the unavailability of their basic needs.”

“Qasem” ended her talk by affirming youth's role: “All civil society institutions count on Palestinian youth, and work to raise their awareness because they are the instrument of change; therefore we always work to raise their awareness and qualify them, even in a simple form, because their role is very important in the process of change.”