Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees
The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC) is a Palestinian feminist community organization. The organisation was established in 1980 to build a progressive, democratic Palestinian civil society free of all forms of discrimination in pursuit of justice. The Union aims to improve the status and empowerment of Palestinian women to ensure true equality between men and women and social justice for all groups of society through publications, programs and campaigns.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
