PNGO - The Palestinian Non- Governmental Organizations’ Network[1]

Social and Economic Rights

Introduction:

The dynamics, crises, and volatility of the new global economy and the neo-liberal world order are of course the context for any contemporary examination of social and economic rights in the MENA region in general and in Palestine in particular.  There is a considerable body of global literature on the effects of the globalization trinity of deregulation, privatization and cuts in social spending on the lives, well-being and opportunities of the world’s poor, and women in particular, as well as a growing body of work on the MENA region (see for example Fergany 1998,  Doumato and Posusney 2003) and the different social revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and others reflect the different social and economic pressures that Arab citizens confront.  

In the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a reflection of the same World Bank policies that the Arab region has adopted within the context of structural adjustment, have been also adopted by the Palestinian Authority but in a more demanding and unique context .  A context of colonial occupation, that has deprived people from all basic rights including self-determination.

Arab countries reality is not far from the international economic context, which was founded on injustice, impoverishment, and the presence of economic policies and development which is biased to a certain elite at the expense of the lower classes and poor and marginalized gn  roups, which led to the existence of structural poverty in the different Arab countries, expect the countries that depend on the returns of oil.

We believe that the revolution in Tunisia ignited by a unemployed young graduate protest to prevent him from selling in the street, this young man managed to create a different reality in Tunisia led to the collapses of the regime under the voices of freedoms and democracy, social justice and equality, and Egypt is not away from Tunisia, the youth revolution in Egypt had to the same basis as a result of lack of economic and political hope for young people, compelling them to take to the streets in mass demonstrations demanding to ending the regime, and radical change to its policies.

The Palestinian NGO network  in cooperation and support from the  Diakonia Regional Office for the Middle East and Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), under the regional program of “  The advocacy role of civil-society organizations in social and economic policy-making in the MENA region”, initiated a program to defend  and advocate for the social and economic rights in Palestine .  The program aimed  at exploring the impact of the development policies that the Palestinian Authority has adopted especially in the last decade on the poor in a gender perspective to promote alternative policies that are more sensitive to the majority of Palestinians and advocate for these rights through different advocacy activities.