MIFTAH
Friday, 29 March. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

“What makes MIFTAH so unique is how they put their trust in us”

With the goal of forwarding the role of women and empowering them in various fields, MIFTAH carries out its program, “Gender Equity and Protection”, which primarily aims at pressuring decision makers to render laws and legislation more sensitive to gender-based violence.

The project is part of UNFPA’s 2011-2013 program to promote gender-equality through laws and legislation and protection in times of emergency. In this capacity, MIFTAH is working to develop and expand its efforts to build coalitions and provide them with information and tools to pressure decision makers in enacting UN resolutions 1325 and 1889.

Najat Irmeileh from the Jericho-area village of Ein Dweik is a participant in MIFTAH’s “Gender Equity and Protection” program. Here she speaks about her participation and her own initiative through the program.

Please tell us a bit about yourself

Najat: I am the head of the Dweik agricultural cooperative. Dweik is a village five kilometers northwest of Jericho. Most of its inhabitants depend on farming in addition to those in the workforce outside the village who also mostly work in agriculture. Our village has a local council of which I am a member. Our cooperative has a number of components, namely agricultural enterprises; we also have a kindergarten. We do women’s training and distribute sheep, beehives and food baskets to those in need. We even set up a store for the women to run that sells food the cooperative products, which has been ongoing for four years.

What compelled you to participate in MIFTAH’s training workshop?

Najat: We received an invitation from MIFTAH to participate in reviving Resolution 1325. Our first meeting was in the Hebron area as an orientation meeting with other organizations in the coalition. We were representatives for Jericho and the Jordan Valley. Then we were invited to a similar meeting in the Nablus area. MIFTAH then held a three-day training course for us at a training center in the Jericho area on ways to launch a social initiative and on how to work as an organizations that targets women for reactivating Resolutions 1325 and 1889. We also participated in an extended workshop at MIFTAH’s office in Ramallah on training trainers in reenacting the resolution. Each organization had to present and prepare for an initiative or activity that MIFTAH would then support.

What was your initiative?

Najat: My initiative was to hold a women’s summer camp upon popular demand from the women themselves. It is also in line with Article 5 of the planning form given to us by MIFTAH, which stipulates that we are to “embrace creative, nonconventional initiatives and hence achieve direct goals and not only transient activities for entertainment.” We often bring women to participate in workshops and training but this is all very conventional. So, we wanted to do something new for the women, including a summer camp – a concept everyone has grown accustomed to being for young men and children. This was the first time a women’s summer camp was ever organized.

Tell us a bit about the summer camp

Najat: It lasted eight days, from September 5th to the 12th. There was a real need for such a camp I believe. We wanted women to be introduced to Resolution 1325 and to understand its importance. The women would have been bored by just sitting in on workshops. But when we educated them on the resolution through fun activities, visits to the springs and other sites in the village, they remembered the information easily. We would talk about 1325 in each activity and discuss ways to activate it. I think it was a big success.

How many women joined the camp?

Najat: The original number of participants was 50 but when we tallied the final number we had 56 women who wanted to join. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take them all because the funding only covered 50 women. But we promised them that would we try to allow for more participation in other activities. This is an indicator of how much women wanted to be part of the summer camp, how much they wanted to be involved.

How do you think the women benefited from the summer camp?

Najat: I think the biggest benefit was that women got to know their rights and that this resolution protects them; that the resolution does not only give them a specific right but gives them a number of rights in their homeland. The resolution has been ratified by the UN Security Council and has been adopted and worked with by women around the world, even Israeli women. So why shouldn’t we Palestinian women do the same? After hearing this reasoning, our women were more than eager to participate.

Using 1325 as a springboard, we also branched out into other areas of women’s empowerment, including the social role of women. For example, if a woman cannot make the change she wants in her husband, she can work to make these changes in her sons for the future – what their role is in the home and how to support their future wives.

What was MIFTAH’s role in your initiative?

Najat: MIFTAH funded our initiative and trained me. Without MIFTAH I don’t think we could have been able to carry out our initiative or float the idea of reactivating Resolution 1325. So, I would like to especially thank MIFTAH and its project coordinator, Najwa Yaghi, who cooperated with us from day one and helped us all along.

How did the summer camp impact the women’s cooperative that you run?

After our initiative, the cooperative has become better known among others and has attracted women who are not members in the cooperative to us. We had women from the three villages of Al Nuwaymeh, Dweik Al Tahta and Dweik Al Fouqa come to us. There has also been a request to hold other summer camps in the future.

How has the training you received from MIFTAH affected you and on your efforts to activate Resolution 1325?

Najat: I have participated in many training courses over the past three years. What makes MIFTAH’s training so unique is their trainers and their up-to-date training materials. MIFTAH’s trainer Maysoun Qawasmee is a wonderful trainer and made the training course very comprehensible for us. We felt personally empowered because it felt like she was speaking for all of us. We discussed the resolution and also discussed ways of documenting Israeli attacks and showing documentary films through MIFTAH. We used to watch films about Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation, about checkpoints and the wall. We saw how affected the women were from these films, especially those that showed other women. The women participating in the training learned how, if they were witness to a violation of a woman, they should film the violation with their mobile phones.

This was an idea that never occurred to these women before. They now realized that they could document any violation against them or any other woman by filming it and sending it to us. We then had our ways of sending it to international organizations so they could be aware of what our women endure.

How would you evaluate MIFTAH’s work among other organizations targeting women?

Najat: What I like about MIFTAH is the trust they put in us. I am so pleased with how they trusted our initiative, supported and funded the women’s summer camp. We are always in contact with MIFTAH’s coordinator Ms. Najwa Yaghi and she is always there to provide support and help. MIFTAH is a unique and wonderful organization.

 
 
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