Women's Studies Center

Activities

• On February 4, 2016, General Director of WSC Sama Awiedah signed a statement declaring support for “Palestinian feminists living under Israel’s system of colonial and racist oppression.”
• In August 2014, WSC, alongside Palestinian Working Women’s Society for Development, the Women’s Legal Aid and Counseling Center, YWCA, and Mada al-Carmel, called for people to wear black to “show your opposition to those who aid Israel’s accumulative genocide against the Palestinian people.”
• In 2007, WSC signed a letter to the President of the Palestinian National Authority, the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and EU and UN Officials, erasing the context of terrorism and alleging that Israel has enacted “sanctions on the already beleaguered Palestinian civilian population… sanctions, which further exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation, further amount to unlawful reprisals and the collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.”

BDS

• In September 2016, Sama Awiedah presented at a conference held by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) at a panel titled “BDS and the intersection of feminism and national liberation struggle.” The panel discussed how the “BDS campaign against Israel serves as one manifestation of resistance to colonialism and imperialism and towards envisioning an alternative future.”
• On March 8, 2016, WSC was a signatory on the “Palestinian Women’s Call for Worldwide Women’s Endorsement of BDS,” which called on women and feminists to join BDS campaigns as “the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid has for decades denied the Palestinian people our inalienable right to self-determination.”
• Signatory to the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS” that calls for an end to Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.”

Partial List of 2013-2014 Grants

* On August 30, 2012, Brot für die Welt merged with the Church Development Service (Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst-EED) and formed “Brot für die Welt – Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst” (Bread for the World – Protestant Church Development Service), as part of the new Protestant Agency for Diakonia and Development (Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung).
**Until 2014, NDC managed the pooled finances of Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands through its Human Rights/Good Governance program; In 2014, NDC was replaced by NIRAS and Birzeit University, which are managing the government funding under the Human Rights and International Law Secretariat.