Middle East

On Friday May 4, 2012, the YWCA of Palestine celebrated World YWCA day in what is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Seventy eight YWCA members, board members and staff from Jerusalem, Ramallah and Jericho headed to the old city of Jericho and shared the global breakfast together as a celebration of the 24^th of April World YWCA day.

Youth leaders from YWCA and YMCA movements around the world are invited to join the annual Journey for Justice Programme in Palestine and Israel. The Journey for Justice brings together youth from across the globe, mainly from YMCAs and YWCAs, to experience and share the daily life of Palestinian youth. For nine days, they join Palestinian youth and travel around the region to witness the effects of Israeli occupation.

On February 23, 2012, Nagham Nassar, World YWCA Programme Associate, and Hannah Yurkovich, World YWCA volunteer, attended the session on Jordan of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Through this interview, they share with us the key issues discussed during the session.

29 novembre 2011: Nous, La Fédération Générale des Femmes Arabes, la Ligue Internationale des Femmes pour la Paix et la Liberté et la YWCA Mondiale, en tant qu’organisations ayant une longue histoire de travail sur les questions de paix juste, avons été témoins du conflit Israélo-palestinien depuis 1948 et sommes restées en solidarité avec les femmes et les filles de cette région.

A testimony of a World YWCA staff member who participated in the Journey for Justice Programme

As a member of the World YWCA, I joined this year’s Journey for Justice 2011 to the Holyland. This annual programme, jointly organised by the YWCA and the East Jerusalem YMCA of Palestine, brings together young people from YWCAs and YMCAs from all over the world to see and understand the everyday life of the youth of Palestine and the socio-political challenges they face. The programme allows youth to come together with Palestinian youth and share their daily lives. The idea was initiated to raise awareness on the situation young people in Palestine face, and allow international youth to become directly involved and experience their situation on a first-hand basis.

The world continues to hold its breath as we witness the unfolding situations in Egypt and Côte d' Ivoire, as citizens, men and women, demand democracy, claim their human rights and ask for the rule of law.

The World YWCA joins her sisters in the Middle East region to condemn the bomb attack perpetrated against the Coptic Christian people on New Year’s Eve at Saints Church in Alexandria, Egypt and expresses her sincere condolences to the families of the victims and to the people of Egypt.

Each year on November 29, the United Nations and the international community observe the International Day in Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The World YWCA, as a member of the Middle East Working Group with Focus on Palestine, will present a statement to the United Nations on November 29 calling upon UN member states and civil society to take action to stop the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands, and to stand up for the rule of international law and international human rights and humanitarian law.

In 2007, Dr. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, through World Vision and in coordination with the YWCA of Palestine, published the study “Facing the Wall: Palestinian Children and Adolescents Speak about the Israeli Separation Wall” which showcased the heavy price Palestinian adolescents have to face, both for being Palestinians and also for living in the shadow of the Wall. The recurring words of the Palestinian teenagers in that study were “divider”, “apartheid,” “snake,” “dangerous disease;” all of which were revolved around the symbolic as well as physical reality of the Wall; a nightmare creeping into the dreams of Palestinians.

The World YWCA stands in solidarity with the people of Pakistan as they cope with the mass flooding that has afflicted their country since July 2010.