Women's Access to Justice & Security (Fact Sheet)

In the State of Palestine, women and girls experience multi-layered forms of discrimination and violence due to both external factors such as the Israeli occupation, and internal factors such as tradition, religion, and normative-generated conservatism. Rights violations occur in the private, as well as in the public sphere, affecting marriage/divorce, child custody, reproductive health and domestic violence, access to education, and economic rights, including the right to decent work and to inherit and control land and other productive resources.

Making the rule of law a reality for women poses challenges at every stage: from inadequate and gender-biased legal frameworks, to ineffective implementation of laws and constitutional guarantees; from lack of accountability/oversight systems to gender-blind budgets and infrastructures. The “justice chain”, the series of steps that a person has to take to access the formal justice system, often breaks down for women. This is mainly due to lack of capacity within the justice and security sectors, discriminatory attitudes of service providers, and a lack of consideration of the barriers women face because of socio-political constraints, poverty and insufficient awareness. A high level of under-reporting and attrition impacts women’s criminal justice cases.