«Hand in Hand» — an initiative to protect the right of peaceful assembly in Palestine

The National Association for Democracy in Rafah and the Civil Commission for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Ramallah carried out the initiative “Hand in hand for protecting the right to peaceful assembly in Palestine”, in partnership with Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, within the project “Strengthening cooperation among Palestinian local community organisations for strengthening the future Palestinian state” — which aims to strengthen cooperation and interaction among civil-action organisations at the national level in discussing the challenges and issues facing Palestinian society and presenting scientific visions and policy proposals for these issues and challenges.

The initiative comprised many activities carried out jointly between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, relying on Skype, targeting young lawyers and journalists of both sexes.

These activities aimed to strengthen contact and connection between the youth in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to create a state of collective discussion around the principal challenges and difficulties facing the right to peaceful assembly.

The initiative included carrying out ten joint awareness discussion sessions between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, hosting a number of legal experts and journalists during these meetings; the greater space in these sessions went to the discussions and exchanged questions between the audiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the aim of strengthening the sense of the unity of the issues and problems facing them. These sessions were attended by 413 young men and women from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

A research paper was likewise prepared addressing the legal protection of the right to peaceful assembly; the paper contained the principal challenges and difficulties facing this right, and concluded with a number of recommendations whose pursuit would improve the reality of the right to peaceful assembly in Palestine. It should be noted that this paper's content was produced from the outputs of the discussion sessions, during which the principal challenges facing the right to peaceful assembly in Palestine were addressed from the participants' viewpoint, along with the most important recommendations that would work to strengthen the protection of the right to peaceful assembly.