By Rebecca Metzer | Resource Development
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your continued support for Palestinian women facing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Through your help, we have managed to expand our reach and projects to help end violence against Palestinian women.
During the first half of 2021, our work was strongly affected by the political challenges facing our region, which included a wave of violence. As the most vulnerable members of the community, Palestinian women and youth were especially affected by this situation. One type of violence faced by Palestinians in Israel, including women, as a result of this crisis was harassment in the workplace. Many women experienced threats of dismissal or subjection to investigation by security personnel based solely on their nationality or involvement in political activism, including posting on social media and demonstrating. In less than one month, Kayan’s hotline received 83 complaints representing approximately 200 women facing workplace harassment or outright firings. Most of the women who approached Kayan for assistance were traumatized and afraid to speak to the press, fearing of losing their jobs. A large number of these cases are ongoing, and your support helps us to work on this fundamental issue of rights for Palestinian women.
Kayan’s work against SGBV is buttressed by our legal and emotional support hotline. Earlier this year, Kayan engaged 15 more volunteers for our emotional and legal support hotline. We have provided our new volunteers with a series of trainings to ensure that they approach women in need of support with compassion and expertise. Over the past year, we have seen through our hotline a significant increase in levels of electronic blackmail and virtual sexual harassment and violence faced by women and girls. In September we engaged a cybercrime expert to hold a training with hotline volunteers to help equip them with the knowledge and tools needed to help women facing increased levels of cyber-harassment.
We have also been engaging with work against SGBV on an international level. Kayan’s director Rafah Anabtawi is currently representing Kayan in a project organized by partners in a consortium led by CARE and the Arab Women’s Organization of Jordan (AWO). This project aims to promote collective action led by women and girls against violence in the MENA region.
Kayan continues to work on our Freedom of Information petition to the Israeli police in order to gain a more detailed understanding of the lack of police protection for Palestinian women, and the scale of violence and femicide against them. This work is a continuation of the femicide researched we described in our last report. The police and Ministry of Justice had initially refused to provide substantial information to Kayan about femicides in Arab society. In response to Kayan’s petition to the district court in Jerusalem, the respondents have released additional data related to murders committed between 2015-2020. In this time period, 73 Arab women were murdered; of these, 23% were murdered by their spouses. According to the data, in over one-third of these cases, the women had filed complaints with the police about violence they had been experiencing even before the murder was committed. The percentage of women that had filed complaints rose to 50% of femicides in 2019, and 60% in 2020. Despite this increase in the number of complaints filed, the police were unable to provide them with protection. The data also shows that 45% of the murders were committed with firearms, indicating the danger of illegal weapons in Arab society, including to women. In total, only 34 indictments were made in all of these cases. Kayan continues to work on this issue as the police and prosecutors still refuse to disclose several details of public interest.
All of the above work contributes to the goal of eliminating SGBV against Palestinian women; it is supported by your generous donations. With your help, long term change is possible.
Gratefully,
The Kayan Team
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