Will new Palestinian agency be enough to stop violence against women?
As more cases of violence against women come to light in the West Bank, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs will be launching a special agency to follow up on such instances and garner statistics to raise public awareness about this phenomenon.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Violence against Palestinian women is being reported more frequently, and women there are fighting back — but in a nonviolent way.
One obstacle in the battle has been a lack of accurate statistics with which to influence politicians and increase public awareness. Now the Ministry of Women’s Affairs plans to establish the National Observatory on Violence Against Women. The ministry will collaborate with the Ministries of Social Affairs and Health, the police and a number of civil society institutions.
The observatory, which is expected to see the light in one year, will collect and document cases of violence against women to gauge the gravity and extent of the problem. The data will be analyzed to help develop public policies to confront the situation.
"The idea … stems from the ministry’s main purpose to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women," Amin Assi, general director of planning and policy in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, told Al-Monitor. "The idea was born during a conference [on developing a national strategy to combat violence] organized by the ministry in 2007,” but languished until it was recently brought up again.
