Ilham Edaes, a 28-year-old health worker in the West Bank, Palestine has been back to work, every day, since May, serving the hardest-to-reach communities through a mobile clinic that offers breast cancer screening. Edaes has a five-year-old son, Majd, who is growing up watching his parents share childcare and domestic chores – an unusual occurrence in the region, where domestic and unpaid care work is largely seen as women’s work.

UN Women and Musawah organised a meeting with Palestinian sharia judges and international experts to discuss new directions in Islamic legal thought and opportunities to respond to needs of women in the Shari'a courts. In Palestine, the Shari’a court deals with family matters which have significant and disproportionate impacts on women’s lives.

More than 700 young Palestinians have received leadership and gender-sensitivity training and several have collectively drafted an alternative constitution that challenges the status quo.