2020-02-12

West Bank and Gaza Strip

Human Rights Defenders / West Bank / Gaza / Announcement / position paper

Femicide is a Stain of Shame and An Ethical, Legal and Social Disaster

Unfortunately, violence against women continues, amounting to murder, as a result of the official, civil, and societal failure to put an end to the series of crimes and violations of rights, and as the product of the culture of treating women as inferiors, which is first practices within the family circle, represented by the father, brother and husband, who promote it in schools and work places, stigmatizing the whole society, and putting it in the face of a moral and legal challenge that requires a serious political will to compel law enforcement bodies and ministries’ officials, starting with the Ministry of Education, Health, Labor and Economy, law enforcement agencies, the Public Prosecution Service, the judiciary, civil society institutions, local councils and political parties, to take serious measures to ensure that the policies, procedures and mechanisms meet the legal, executive and judicial requirements to reduce the phenomenon of violence against women, to hold accountable those who commit such acts, to abide by the provisions of the Basic Law, in particular article 9, which prohibits any discrimination between citizens on the basis of sex, article 10, which protects human rights, and article 32, which considers any violation of human rights a crime that may not be subject to any statute of limitations, an require their perpetrators to provide a fair remedy to the victims, and to respect the international covenants to which the State of Palestine has acceded, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Protocol against Torture and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

MUSAWA- The Palestinian Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession reiterates its call for full social commitment to the contents of the first paragraph, given that our society is witnessing a steady increase in the number of femicide of women, as 20 femicide crimes were recorded in 2019, while at the beginning of 2020, three murders have been committed against two housewives and a female student from the Gaza Strip, the latest of which was the murder of a 25-year-old wife, who is a mother of children, by her husband.

While we express our outrage and condemnation at the continued exposure of woman to the most intolerable forms of violence, amounting to murder, we also believe that duty-bearers, official and civil institutions and bodies share the responsibility to declare a state of emergency in order to provide protection, safety and security for women, through ensuring their legislative elements, such as enacting of the Family Protection Law, amending the Penal Code, implementing the principle of equal employment, remuneration and education, abiding to the regulations governing the mechanisms for receiving complaints from beaten women, in a manner that ensures their access to justice, and working on the cultural reconstruction of the officials working in the civil and official bodies of law enforcement and prosecution, to accept the concepts of equality between men and women and the rule of law, as a basic requirement for providing  safety, protection and security for women and girls, and as an effective way to combat violence against women and to achieve a society free from violence, discrimination and corruption, so that such crimes do not get normalized.  

Our society is facing a moral and statutory catastrophe that does not accept the silent treatment anymore, thus, everyone's responsibility to work on developing the policies, legislation, and procedures used to confront this phenomenon.

Peace to the souls of the victims and shame on their killers.

Issued on 12/2/2020