EU and the Palestinian Bar Association Mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence – Press Release (Non-UN Document)

In the last couple of years, gender-based violence has seen a dramatic increase globally. In the Palestinian society and digital space, Palestinian women and girls continue to experience various kinds of violence, in many instances with little to no accountability for perpetrators. Campaigns against women’s rights are on the rise, placing undue obstacles to the work of women human rights defenders, activists, and journalists. This rise can be attributed to social, economic and political tensions in Palestinian society, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the increased use of online platforms. The Israeli occupation adds another layer of pressure on Palestinian women and girls as it contributes to strengthening prevailing patriarchal paradigms, which sustains the cycle of violence against women within the Palestinian domestic sphere.

The impact of violence has serious physical, sexual and mental consequences for women and girls. For women, violence limits their personal freedoms, rights to expression and privacy and negatively affects women’s general well-being and health. This coercive environment prevents women from fully participating in society, impacting not only their families but also their communities, and the country at large. Children, who grow up in families where there is violence, may suffer a range of behavioural and emotional disturbances. These can also be associated with perpetrating or experiencing violence later in life. The social and economic costs of violence are enormous and have ripple effects throughout society.

“Violence against women and girls is a grave and widespread human rights violation. In the European Union, one out of three women over the age of 15 have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence. In the MENA region, at least 37% of women in the Arab world and North Africa have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime, which places the region in second place globally. The European Union and its Member States continue to be at the forefront of fighting gender-based violence and lend full support to national human rights defenders and activists,” said EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff. “Today, we stand here in solidarity with all gender-based violence victims and survivors and to send an unequivocal message to those who order, allow or perpetrate all forms of violence: violence will not be tolerated and perpetrators must be prosecuted.”