Status Report on Community-based Alternative Dispute Resolution Mechanisms and Practices pertaining Violence Against Women and Girls

In Palestine, while access to justice for women and girls is largely unguaranteed, past interventions in country have focused only on the supply of formal justice side alone dedicated to researching the system, providing legal counseling as part of Gender-based Violence (GBV) multi-sectoral responses and building the capacity of formal justice actors. This often leaves unaddressed the traditional/informal justice mechanisms which deals with the majority of cases impacting women and girls and precisely those related to Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) highly under-reported to the formal institutions in charge.

The need for channels other than the formal judiciary ones has started to be developed, crystallized and classified according to the cases and situations which have more difficulties in accessing the official judiciary system, of which the most notable are cases of family conflicts and more concretely those specifically related to violence against women and girls, even when it may not be the most suitable channel for all of them from a gender-based lens. While Palestine counts with some legal frameworks that address the violence against women and girls, these are not comprehensive, law enforcement is weak and not very effective for the survivors and procedures that comply with the proper safeguards such as confidentiality, protection or speediness are not fully in place. Also, there are problems related to the implementation of judicial rulings, specifically those related to cases of violence against women and girls in specific areas such as Area C of the West Bank, Jerusalem and some suburbs given the lack of power of the Palestinian Authority there.