Our Work 
WCLAC achieves its objectives through its four programme activity units and the Administration and Finance unit:

Service Unit 
  The Service Unit provides professional social counselling and legal services for Palestinian women victims of violence who otherwise have nowhere to turn.

In the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), where the Israeli Occupying Forces are not held accountable to international human rights or humanitarian law, Palestinian women are more vulnerable to gender-based violence and threats of violence at the hands of their own patriarchal society. The entitlement to act violently with impunity becomes appropriated by individuals in the family and in society at large, whose traditional powers of authority are threatened by the devastating economic, political, and social effects of the Occupation. In this context, Palestinian women become the symbols of their authority, often subject to their frustrations by violent means.

Since WCLAC’s establishment, the Service Unit has provided social counselling, legal aid, and legal representation for thousands of women victims of violence, or potential victims of femicide. Through its legal work, the Service Unit highlights discrimination against women in Palestinian law and aims to amend these laws to integrate principles of gender equality.

The largest of WCLAC’s units, the Service Unit is composed of a cadre of full-time and part-time social workers and lawyers who undertake the following activities:
• Provision of direct legal and social services.
• Direct advocacy in courts, schools, and other locations as needed.
• Training of local professionals from NGOs and government offices - including civil and religious courts - on feminist principles and methods for serving threatened women.
• Community-level education and awareness-raising for women and men on the oppression of women, women’s rights, and human rights in general; awareness workshops in schools and universities, and with groups of women concerning women’s rights, violence prevention, gender roles and cultural practices that negatively affect the lives of Palestinian women.

Another important component of the Service Unit’s work is the running and management of an emergency shelter for women victims of violence and abuse, which was opened by WCLAC staff in 2005 and which serves women and their children from all over the West Bank.
 

Lobbying and Advocacy Unit 
  In order to promote and develop WCLAC’s effectiveness in advocating for women’s rights, the Advocacy Unit builds relations and networks with civil and professional organizations and institutions, both locally and internationally. The Advocacy Unit aims to publicize and condemn Israeli occupation practices against Palestinian women as well as gender-based discrimination within Palestinian society, and to contribute to developing new laws, policies, and amendments that are gender-sensitive and that protect the rights of Palestinian women. To this end, the Advocacy Unit has been focusing on three key pieces of legislation that greatly impact the condition of Palestinian women, namely the Personal Status Law, the Criminal Law and the proposed Family Protection against Violence Law.

The Unit’s key strategies in effecting positive change in the status of Palestinian women include:
• Active participation in drafting gender-sensitive amendments and laws, as well as defending these amendments and laws in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and Palestinian judiciary in cooperation of a variety of coalitions, such as the Criminal Law Coalition, the Personal Status Law Coalition, and the Family Protection Law Coalition;
• Running awareness-raising programs dealing with women’s rights for other West Bank organisations and institutions working on women’s issues; and
• Participating in several Coalitions and forums to change public perceptions of women and their rights, including: the coalition for the Family Protection from Violence Law; the Coalition against Capital Punishment; the coalition for Monitoring Human Rights Violations; the Criminal Law Coalition; the Personal Status Law Coalition; the Media Forum (Media Forum to support women’s rights (OMQ); the Coalition against Violence Against Women (Al-Muntada); the Civil Society Coalition for Impartial Justice and Just Judiciary; the Palestinian Coalition for Safe Abortion; and the coalition for monitoring human right’s violations under the current conditions (International Humanitarian Law Forum).
 

Capacity-Building Unit 
  Set up in 2005 to overcome the obstacles related to restriction of movement due to the construction of the Israeli Separation Wall, the Capacity-Building Unit works to build the sustainability, efficiency, and professionalism of other grassroots and professional women’s organisations so that they can better serve Palestinian women living in all areas of the Occupied Territories who, due to logistics such as occupation-related movement restrictions, cannot access WCLAC’s programs or services.

The Capacity-Building Unit seeks to fulfil this aim through the following programs:

• Volunteers program: Building the capacity of local, voluntary grassroots leaders and volunteers of both sexes that can initiate local awareness raising programmes and activities on women’s rights and gender-based violence, and that promote effective management, leadership, and communication skills.

• Grassroots capacity-building program: Providing technical assistance to grassroots organisations by training their staff and Board members on developing and strengthening their organisational structures, so they can provide more effectively social and legal services to women in their communities.

• Professional capacity-building program: Supporting and training the staff of referral institutions dealing with women victims of violence, such as police officers, lawyers, social workers and health professionals, so that they are better equipped to handle such cases in a sensitive and appropriate manner; those trainings are aimed to incorporate topics such as women’s rights and violence against women into the training curricula of health workers and social services providers at both the governmental and non-governmental levels.

• Graduates program: Targeting and supporting future professionals such as social workers, school counsellors and lawyers, by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to recognise and deal with cases of abuse and violence against girls and women.

The Capacity-Building Unit was also instrumental, together with the former WCLAC’s Legal Aid and Social Work Units, in providing skills and expertise in setting up safe homes to ensure protection for Palestinian women victims of violence. When WCLAC participated in the establishment of a safe home in Bethlehem in 2004, called MEHWAR, the Capacity-Building Unit trained staff and volunteers, built effective and appropriate protocols, and worked with women’s families and governmental and non-governmental institutions to ensure their safety. Once the safe home was up and running, management responsibilities were handed over to the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) according to plan.
 

Research and Documentation Unit 
  This unit was set up to research and document violations of Palestinian women’s rights, gender-based violence relating both to the patriarchal structure of Palestinian society (i.e. femicide, domestic violence and incest) and violence inflicted by the Occupying Forces, and other issues concerning the status of Palestinian women, such as reproductive health. In addition, the Unit also documents WCLAC’s history, work and achievements.

The Research and Documentation Unit leads and supports the Centre’s efforts to acquire and gather first hand data through community-based research, related to the programs and topics of concern to WCLAC. This includes determining new definitions of - among other concepts - feminism, statehood and law from a feminist perspective and from Palestinian women’s unique experience of living under occupation. It also includes recognizing and honouring the various ways in which women know and understand their world.

Currently, the Unit is engaged in several lines of research and documentation:
• Studying Palestinian women’s responses to the marital status law and its articles.
• Examining the Palestinian draft constitution and the way it deals with gender-related issues.
• Researching the factors behind the exclusion of Arab women from the protection granted to all peoples under international law.
• Contributing to the preparation of “shadow reports” representing the case of Palestinian women under occupation, to the United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
• Analysing local Palestinian newspapers and the way they address women-related issues such as divorce, domestic violence, and women and child allowances.

Additionally, the Unit organises internal workshops and study days for WCLAC staff with the aim of discussing and internalising feminist principles so that they are integrated into the Centre’s work. It also runs trainings for other feminists and human rights activists on documenting the situation of Palestinian women.

The Unit also maintains a specialized library, popular with researchers and university students, and which is evolving into a valuable resource centre within the community.
 

Administration and Finance Unit 
  The Administration and Finance Unit serves as the foundation on which WCLAC’s programmatic units and staff operate to further the organisation’s mission, purpose, and vision.

Its main responsibilities include:
• Overseeing the financial and administrative processes in the organisation, the coordination of program planning and development as well as the quality control of the overall work of the programmatic units. This is achieved through planning, reporting, monitoring and evaluation processes. In addition, the Administration and Finance Unit promotes the integrity of the structure and organisation of the Centre, maintaining ethical and sound administrative and fiscal operations.
• Working towards building strong, positive relations with other NGOs, community-based organizations, governmental, legal, and religious bodies, and the wider Palestinian, regional, and international publics.
• Ensuring the sustainability of WCLAC through fund-raising activities and building and/or strengthening relations with partners and funders.
• Management of WCLAC’s human resources and capacity-building of the staff.
• Leading Media-related activities to release information proactively to improve the visibility, locally and internationally, of the Centre’s work as well as to answer queries from journalists, activists, academics, and others about our various programs and activities.