Palestine Country Office

Through innovative programmes, UN Women has been supporting Palestinian women since 1997 to achieve their social, economic and political rights.

While significant progress in gender equality and women’s empowerment has been achieved, the volatile and fragile context of the occupied Palestinian territory has made progress fragile and prone to regression. Years of Occupation and political strife have affected the socioeconomic situation of the Palestinian population as a whole and in particular, increased women’s vulnerability to social and economic insecurity and to an integrated system of violence. In response to this complex context and the composite needs of Palestinian women and families, UN Women concentrates its efforts and interventions on the following goal areas:

• Increasing Palestinian women’s transformative leadership and participation in decision-making;
• Increased economic empowerment of Palestinian women, especially those who are most excluded (socially, economically, politically and geographically);
• Combatting violence against Palestinian women and girls and expanding their access to protection and other services;
• Increased Palestinian women’s leadership in peace, security and the engendering of humanitarian response.
• Stronger institutional accountability to gender equality commitments.

To realize these strategic goals within the context of the oPt, UN Women has adopted a bottom-up approach of community-based women’s empowerment while in parallel, supporting the Palestinian Government in the implementation of gender-sensitive plans and policy-level initiatives. Through its two-pronged approach, UN Women aims to support the resilience and rights of those who are most excluded and marginalized, thereby improving and the lives of thousands of Palestinian women, men, boys and girls.

All programme areas are aligned with the Palestinian Government’s national development priorities and are geared to enhancing national ownership and capacity to implement national gender equality commitments. UN Women focuses on strengthening the efficiency of national institutions as duty-bearers, with a view to promoting women’s human rights, as well as improving access to and delivery of quality services to the most vulnerable women and girls.  Concurrently, UN Women adopts an empowerment approach for Palestinian women and girls as rights-holders.

Aside from programmatic interventions, UN Women is mandated to work on engendering humanitarian and development response, particularly through coordination efforts within the UN system and establishing linkages of humanitarian and development actors with gender equality advocates.