JOB DESCRIPTION
DEVELOPMENT WORKER POST
International Law Training and Research Coordinator
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling
Occupied Palestinian Territory
1. Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling
WCLAC was established in Jerusalem in 1991 as a Palestinian independent non-governmental non-profit organisation with the aim of contributing to the building of a democratic Palestinian society based on principles of equality and social justice between men and women. In order to achieve this aim, WCLAC develops programmes and projects with a clear agenda whose terms of reference are derived from international human rights standards in order to serve Palestinian women. WCLAC’s five units work together to implement and follow-up those programmes and projects.
By forging a feminist vision aimed at achieving equality and social justice, WCLAC has been able to make an important number of achievements in the area of human rights and, in particular, Palestinian women's rights. In 1998, WCLAC was awarded the French annual prize for human rights for its initiative to influence Palestinian decision makers and legislature in adopting laws, legislation and policies ensuring equality and the rights of Palestinian women.
Since its establishment, WCLAC has issued a group of Arabic and English language reports and studies analyzing the status of Palestinian women. These have been used as references for students and others involved in the improvement of the status of women and the removal of discrimination against them.
Structure and culture
The Centre has a board of trustees, a Director, deputy Director and full staff. WCLAC operates its programmes out of three offices: the new main office in Ramallah, as well as offices in Hebron and the Old City of Jerusalem. It is an efficient organisation with 5 main operational units under which all work is done. WCLAC has demonstrated impressive organisational capacity at a high level.
The team, however, will in practice use a participatory team approach, where many of the decisions will be made through discussion. The team will consist of existing staff (librarian and programme assistant) and newly recruited staff, amongst others. The Director is Ms. Maha Abu-Dayyeh.
2. The Work of WCLAC
WCLAC focuses on Palestinian women (those 18 years and older) who are caught in a vicious circle of violence and fear, where neither the private nor the public sectors provide any solace or protection. They are victimised by political violence, living in perpetual fear for their safety and that of their families while bearing the additional burdens imposed on them under harrowing conditions such as house demolitions. They are also victims of heightened violence within their homes but are unable to speak publicly against their attackers due to the possibility of being accused of selfish and unpatriotic behaviour and of being blamed for the victimisation.
To incorporate the above goals, WCLAC implements various activities such as:
o Organisational Capacity Building
o Lobbying and advocacy
o Social support program
o Empower battered women through group therapy and counselling
o Legal aid and education program
o Community-based research
WCLAC educates and trains women in the various social and legal fields by means of workshops and lectures organised in the cities, villages and refugee camps. WCLAC has been professionally instrumental in following up cases of socially victimized women and women whose legal rights have been violated through legal representation, personal support and social counselling. WCLAC also addresses the consequences of decades-long occupation and Israeli violence against Palestinian women through advocacy and service delivery programmes. In general, Palestinian women are noticeably underrepresented in paid job opportunities, are exposed to unsuitable working conditions, and have less control over economic resources compared to men.
For several years, WCLAC has been working at developing capacity to deal effectively with applying international laws and conventions to improve Palestinian women's status. This has been done through both theoretical and practical work to become critically knowledgeable, i.e., analyse both the strengths and limitations of existing frameworks and begin to re-conceptualise areas that are not applicable to Palestinian situation in order to generate more effective intervention strategies at the international level. Although WCLAC has designated a staff position to do the work, there are limits due to lack of technical expertise. Several focused attempts have been made to move the work forward such as attending training workshops and securing technical assistance locally. The most difficult problem faced is making linkages between the impact of occupation and liberation of Palestinian people on one hand and women's rights on the other. Too often, national liberation struggles have been divorced form women's liberation. WCLAC’s goal is to show how the two are inextricably linked therefore must be dealt with accordingly in the international legal arena.
To achieve its strategic objective, WCLAC decided to create the Palestinian Women's Human Rights Programme. Two units assume more responsibility for directly addressing the issue. These are the Advocacy and Lobbying and the Research and Documentation units. The project proposed below will be housed in the Research and Documentation Unit.
3. The Project
Within its Research and Documentation Unit programme, WCLAC needs to build operational capacity. The need for expertise in handling issues pertaining to advanced research, UN mechanisms and networking are an essential component for the Centre’s continued operation and service delivery. WCLAC needs to set up a sustainable system, staffed by skilled personnel to implement its research related strategy. Such expertise is lacking at the Centre and the skills/profile required are not available locally. There are organisations that provide assistance and training on matters related to traditional understandings of international laws and conventions but none on feminist perspectives and frameworks that will enable WCLAC to accomplish its strategic objective. To this end the DW would train, build capacity in advanced research on international laws and conventions, and assist in networking with NGOs and UN organisations to further boost the efficiency of the staff.
4. Development Worker Role
The main role of the Development Worker will be to build the capacity and networking capabilities of the organisation to enable enhanced delivery of its legal training and research goals. As legal research and training coordinator, the DW will be able to provide organisational capacity building assistance and training to WCLAC’s Research and Documentation Unit staff to improve its programmatic operations so as to effectively achieve these goals.
As with every other unit within WCLAC, the RDU is overseen by the Unit Head. Unlike the other units, this is a relatively small unit with two full-time researchers and Feminist Research Consultant, plus the Unit Head whose primary responsibilities are administrative and training. The philosophy and practice of the unit is based on feminist democratic or principles where all major intra-unit decisions are taken collectively with significant input often from all the other units. This is true especially for deciding which research projects to undertake.
The main objectives of WCLAC for this project are as follows:
o To document violations of Palestinian women's human rights in both the public and private spheres.
o To utilise existing international laws and conventions to address violations that are the result of both Israeli occupation and internal gender-based inequalities.
o Create conceptual and theoretical framework for international aspects of Palestinian Women’s Human Rights Program;
o Develop and refine feminist methodology for documenting human rights violations of women for use both by WCLAC and other organisations;
o Develop staff capacity internally within WCLAC, particularly in Research and Documentation and Advocacy and Lobbying units, who will apply international frameworks directly to their respective areas of responsibility, and remaining staff will have general information and rudimentary knowledge
o Monitor actions, document incidents, and collect various other kinds of data regarding violations of women’s rights, from violence against women by the Israeli army and in the private sphere;
o Disseminate findings via print and electronic media locally, regionally, and internationally;
o Organise community-based local educational events, focusing particularly on women and men outside the major urban centres, to raise awareness and gain support for application of international human rights protocols;
o Strengthen existing relations and forge new ones at the international level by attending relevant meetings to learn from and to gain political support from international actors and institutions by disseminating most current information regarding the situation facing Palestine and Palestinian women.
The general objective for the DW is to provide the theoretical leadership in the international aspect of WCLAC’s Palestinian Women’s Human Rights Programme.
Specific objectives include:
o Developing the theoretical and conceptual frameworks for both the substantive work and organisation of the international aspect of the PWHR program
o Educating and training the project participants, most especially the RDU staff trainee, other staff colleagues, and the community fieldworkers, in foundational aspects of international human rights laws and conventions as they apply specifically to women and girls
o Supervising and evaluating staff trainee and fieldworkers during the initial phase of applying new learning in cooperation with Unit Head.
The specific activities of the Development Worker are expected to be[1]:
o Learning the specificity of current women's situation in both private and public spheres in OPT
o Organizing and leading workshops for Unit, Centre staff, fieldworkers, and eventually others in the wider community
o Working closely with and teaching staff-trainee how to write related concept papers, working papers, press releases, position papers, and so on
o Overseeing and assuming primary responsibility for writing the UNCEDAW Shadow Report and conjointly teaching staff-trainee for future writing of such reports
o Work with staff-trainee to provide women's and gender dimensions to various treaty bodies and to Palestinian reports submitted to the UN
o Writing theoretical papers, and designing and preparing training materials and ultimately a training manual. This plan will include strategy and methods for eventual transfer of her responsibilities to staff trainee and room for incorporating tasks responding to emergency or urgent action.
The Development Worker will be supervised by the Head of the Research and Documentation Unit and the Feminist Research Consultant.
4. Person Specification
The following experience and qualifications are expected from the ideal candidate:
Academic requirements:
· Minimum law degree in international human rights law;
· MA international relations or other related areas
Specific training:
· Training on UN mechanisms and instruments
· Research training, analytical and theoretical writing
Work experience
· At least two years of experience in action- research policy based
· Human rights, Networking, coordination mechanisms
· Working knowledge of international legal institutions and instruments
· Some experience in working in insecure environments.
Organisational skills:
· Ability to think strategically and to plan ahead
· Ability to work in a team
· Ability to promote and work with groups,
Capacity building skills:
· Ability to transfer his/her skills and to organize/give training.
· Ability to convert theory and standards into operational proposals/activities.
· Experience in working with NGOs
Language skills
· English: Excellent / Native speaker standard
· Arabic: Some basic knowledge in Arabic is preferred
Personal qualities
· Ability to adapt skills and time to all necessary tasks
· Flexibility in scheduling, location and nature of work
· Confident, self-motivated and initiative-taking
· Independent yet able to work cooperatively and closely with all staff, both local and international
· Ability to communicate with people from different cultures
· Sensitivity to and self awareness of attitudes about Arabic cultural traditions and local religions
· Ability to explain complex and difficult issues effectively to persons with different levels of understanding and experiences
· Ability to maintain clear communication among stake holders.
· Able to work under pressure and in stressful conditions
· Able to deal with violence and frustration.
· Able to cope well with unpredictability
· Should have some knowledge and understanding of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and the Middle East region
· Results oriented.
5. Living and Working Conditions
Location
The main office of WCLAC is in Ramallah, located in the Centre of the West Bank, approximately sixteen kilometres north of Jerusalem. The DW will be living in Ramallah and working in the Ramallah, Jerusalem and Hebron areas with the Research and Documentation Unit.
Ramallah is one of the main cities in the West Bank and often seen as the most liberal. Though recreational civic activity has waned considerably since 2000 still there are restaurants, coffeehouses (some of which serve alcohol and beer) and cinemas that are functioning and popular. Ramallah is relatively small and distances within the city are easily covered by walking. However, taxis, or ‘serveeces’ are readily available to take passengers either within the city confines or to the checkpoint entrances of other cities in the West Bank (including Jerusalem).
Living in harmony with local culture:
Palestinian society is generally conservative, though there are pockets of liberalism in each community. Compared to the communities of the West Bank, people in Gaza tend to be more outwardly conservative (i.e., it is rare to see women without hijab on the street).
The culture of the occupied Palestinian territories is Arab in its roots and similar to that in the wider region (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). ‘Arab hospitality’ is deeply ingrained within Palestinian communities; visitors rarely go hungry, thirsty, or without offers of shelter for the night in a Palestinian village, no matter how poor. Extended families have been the norm but have started to disintegrate in recent years, due to the prevailing circumstances and immigration to Arab and Western countries. Contrary to certain conceptions, gender roles are surprisingly balanced, especially in rural areas. It is not easy for outsiders to understand the complexities of gender roles in a situation marred by violence and conflict, survival oriented behaviour and changing cultural concepts, where 50% of the university students can be female, while early (as young as age fourteen) marriage of girls and limits on girls’ education and discrimination in the labour market do occur.
Palestinian communities are close-knit, and personal information about anyone easily becomes public. Foreigners and Palestinians alike often feel that they do not have much personal space or privacy within villages especially. Given the conservatism and the lack of privacy, Development Workers are advised – even in more urban areas - to limit evidence of alcohol consumption and extra-marital sexual activity, and to dress modestly when interacting with members of the community.