Conflict Resolution Center launches the project "A protective environment for children against sexual exploitation"

Gaza, Publication and Information Unit:
The Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution launched the project "A protective environment for children against sexual exploitation" at a meeting held with the project's partner organisations, numbering 20 grassroots organisations in the Gaza Strip and 15 in the West Bank, with funding from the European Union.
During the meeting, Eng. Iyad Abu Hjair, deputy director general of the Conflict Resolution Center, welcomed the partner organisations and stressed the important role they will play with the Centre in bringing about a qualitative shift in achieving the aims and activities of the project for protection from sexual exploitation.
He added that through this project we aim to reduce cases of harassment by creating awareness, maturity and community education so as to avoid falling into this problem, which is a subject regarded as taboo in our society.
Abu Hjair said the Centre carries out many projects targeting women, children and young people through a range of activities aimed at building and developing the capacities of these groups so as to create a cohesive and strong society.
For her part, Eng. Najat Al-Jubeiri, the project coordinator in Gaza, explained that the project comes as a stage completing an earlier project carried out in the Gaza Strip alone, with the new project also covering the West Bank.
She added that the project will contain many activities serving children, parents, mukhtars and mosque imams.
Al-Jubeiri said several case management committees will be formed to act as an advisory body where there are difficult cases in the project, with membership comprising a doctor, a lawyer, a head teacher, public figures and two members of the association.
She showed, according to an analysis of the earlier project's results, that the age group most exposed to harassment was children between 7 and 12, that cases of harassment of boys were more numerous than of girls, that most of those who harassed them were relatives and neighbours, and that the highest rate of harassment came from cousins on the father's and the mother's side.
The earlier project reached around 10,000 parents and 9,000 children aged between 5 and 12, in the Gaza Strip alone.