2015 Activities

Palestinian Women Against Corruption

Palestinian Women Against Corruption

We, the Palestinian women who have met in 29/03/2015 in response to the call of the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability-AMAN, affirm that the struggles of Palestinian women are integrated in our homeland against the occupation, its colonial projects and denial of our inalienable national rights in the establishment of our state and self-determination. On the other hand, Palestinian women struggle against a system of discriminating legislations, policies, cultural and social traditions.

We consider the adhesion of Palestine to a number of International Agreements related to respect of human rights, combating corruption and indiscrimination, on top of them CEDAW Convention and the United Nations Convention against Corruption, an opportunity for the Palestinian feminist movement to bind all sides to work together to change the current situation of women influenced by discrimination.
Corruption in its different forms (Wasta, favoritism, nepotism, waste of public fund, sexual harassment in public jobs… etc) is continuously aggravating women’s sufferance by marginalizing her and discriminating against her.

It has deprived women from gaining their social, political, economic and cultural rights, and caused harm to society as whole in and to women in particular.

Today, as we fight to build a Palestinian State, we raise our voices high: women, academics, activists, employees, representatives of official and civil feminist organisations, that we support the serious efforts to enhance integrity and combating corruption, through:

• Activating accountability and monitoring of the works of public officials in addition to completing and enacting the system of legislations that protect the Palestinian family, especially the personal status law proposed since more than twenty years.
• Calling all civil and governmental authorities to support the endorsement of policies that prevent women from falling victims of corruption, by increasing her representation in public senior positions and decision-making positions, taking gender into consideration in employment, job rotation and promotions, and considering the crime of sexual harassment in public jobs as a crime of corruption..
• Rationalization of the expenditure of public funds and prohibiting wasting it because of corruption, which led to a relative fall back of the share of health and education services from the general budget after deducting the salaries’ invoice. This had a direct negative impact on women, being the largest part of the community in demand of these services.
• By joining and signing the “Citizenship Pact to Enforce Integrity and Combat Corruption”, we express our rejection of corruption and our will to participate in combating it in all its forms. In order to stop any perpetrator of corruption from evading punishment, we call our women to report corruption and protect whistleblowers.

End of statement

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