Women lawyers call for tightening legal procedures to reduce the phenomenon of killing women in the West Bank

Nablus, Publication and Information Unit:

A number of women lawyers called for tightening legal procedures in Palestine in order to reduce the phenomenon of killing women on various grounds, including killing on grounds of honour, and for pressing and mobilising the public to issue the draft Palestinian penal code and to increase the number of awareness workshops on the consequences of such killings for the perpetrators.

These calls came during a dialogue workshop entitled "The legal view of cases of killing women", held by the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution at its branch in Nablus governorate, within the series of events of the campaign for securing Palestinian women's rights for the project "Towards a society free of violence", funded by the Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) programme, with the participation of a number of women and representatives of civil society organisations.

At the start of the workshop, the social worker at the Conflict Resolution Center, Wurud Yassin, reviewed the main violations against women, including the recording of twenty-five cases of women killed since the beginning of 2013, adding: "The Conflict Resolution Center has intensified its work in recent years to ensure progress towards a safe environment for every woman and girl, and so that marginalised women recover their legal rights and receive suitable psychological and social support."

For her part, Judge Manal Al-Masri explained the legal dimensions of cases where killings occur and how the justice bodies, including the judiciary, deal with cases of killing women, in addition to addressing the suspension of article 340 of the penal code by presidential decree. She explained that killing cases take a long time in the corridors of the courts and that the way cases of killing women are handled depends on the statements and on the methods of taking them.

On the role of women's organisations in handling this file, the lawyer Samah Jaghlab set out the main gaps in the law, which include the crimes of rape and murder and their dangers to society's internal cohesion. She pointed to the forms in which the Family Defence Society deals and intervenes when cases reach it of girls threatened with being killed by their relatives and families.