"A homeland worthy of its children"

This was the title of the closing conference organised by the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution in the Palestine hall in Khan Younis governorate for the project "Remedial education and child protection through local community participation", on Thursday 30/12/2010. The conference was attended by the deputy technical supervisor at the Directorate of Education in the city of Khan Younis, Mr. Ismail Harb, as the directorate's representative, the director of Save the Children in Gaza and the project coordinator from Italian Cooperation, in addition to a select group of public figures and a gathering of citizens. Raed Saada, the project coordinator at the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, noted that this conference comes within the efforts made for the sake of protecting childhood and strengthening and advocating children's rights. He also stressed the need for Palestinian society to take a serious stand and unify efforts in order to provide a safe educational environment that protects the rights of the child, to reject unjustified violence against children, and to involve them in taking the decisions concerning their rights. In an address by the representative of the Directorate of Education, Mr. Ismail Harb, he stressed the efforts the ministry is making to move the educational process forward, despite the severe shortage of financial resources, and said that civil society organisations must take up their role in contributing everything they can for the sake of serving the educational process at schools and filling the financial deficit the ministry suffers from. On the other hand, the project coordinator from Save the Children mentioned that the international organisations are doing everything they can to reduce children's suffering, particularly in the Gaza Strip, and that she had come to Palestine in a personal capacity in order to help the children of Palestine and advocate for their rights. At the close of the conference a set of recommendations was produced which they stressed must be taken into account, the most important of them being: the need to intensify cooperation between governmental institutions and donor organisations regarding projects supporting children's rights; the need to maintain schools, particularly with the start of winter, to provide a suitable educational environment for pupils; in addition to the need to activate community participation in developing the local community.