Success story

March 2010

The Center for Women's Legal Research and Consulting (CWLRC) is an independent Palestinian civil society organization based in Gaza that focuses on educating Palestinian women on legal and social issues in order to help them attain equality, justice and democracy in Palestinian society.

In October 2009, CWLRC began implementing an eight-month grant agreement from the USAID-funded Netham Rule of Law Project. The grant focuses on the "Legal Protection of Vulnerable Women in the Gaza Strip." Through this grant, CWLRC conducted intensive training for 12 young newly practicing lawyers - among whom are 7 women. The 60-hour training aimed to empower the young lawyers with knowledge that will assist them in defending women’s rights and specifically addressed gender, marriage, divorce, and inheritance issues in addition to Training of Trainers skills. This group has in turn been actively engaged in conducting awareness workshops for women throughout the Gaza Strip.

These trained lawyers were involved in facilitating over 41 awareness workshops and led the discussions in these workshops which were intended to increase community awareness on women’s legal status, women’s rights in light of the current Palestinian domestic law and the international agreements mainly the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Over 1700 citizens have participated in these workshops.

CWLRC also engaged in conducting educational sessions for 155 law school students in order to increase their awareness of women’s legal status in relation to international agreements and conventions. The law school students attended the awareness workshops held by CWLRC in their regions in order to involve them in community activities. These sessions were facilitated by 5 male and 5 females trained lawyers. Additionally community meetings were held to introduce the project and assess women’s needs in Gaza. These meetings were attended by 110 women’s NGO representatives, and women’s activists.

To help enhance and guide the lawyers’ performance in the awareness workshops, CWLRC has published two legal publications on family law and international agreements. And, CWLRC has produced research papers on early marriage, divorce, the role of NGOs in supporting women, women in the labor force, and the reality of women's legal education.

Rawia Basal, 27, a young lawyer who participated in various activities of this grant said: “I was very happy when CWLRC informed me that I would join the training courses.” Speaking about her experience before joining the project Rawia said: “It the first time I left home and engaged in community activities after my graduation.” In the course of the grant, Rawia was very active and her contribution in the training sessions enabled her to be selected to conduct a number of awareness workshops. “Being involved in this project has encouraged me to be more active with women’s NGOs and I am now looking forward to participating in similar projects in the future."