Ramallah - "Jerusalem" dot com - Representatives of ministries and non-governmental institutions unanimously agreed on the need for an integrated plan between ministries and institutions to ensure employment and decent work without discrimination, work to empower civil society organizations, and increase their knowledge of employment policies in order to defend the labor and economic rights of women , Networking and coordinating work with official frameworks, and recommended the need for social care for people with disabilities, empowering institutions and associations, and organizing monthly workshops in cooperation with relevant ministries to introduce and raise awareness of their role in support and empowerment.

This came during a symposium organized by the Center for Democracy and Workers' Rights , on "employment policies and decent work in the city of Al-Bireh, with the participation of representatives of the Council of Ministers, and the ministries of Labor, Women's Affairs, Finance, Public Works and Housing, National Economy, and the Palestinian Employment Fund, and a number Among the civil and women’s grassroots institutions from the governorates of Hebron, Jericho and the Jordan Valley, as part of the project “Gender Equality in the Economic Field: Our Right and Our Priority”, which is implemented by the Center in partnership with the Italian institutions COSPE and EducAid, and the Palestinian Working Women Association for Development, with funding from the European Union.

Karen Metz, project manager at the Center for Democracy and Workers' Rights, highlighted the importance of the project: "Gender Equality in the Economic Field: Our Right and Our Priority," which focuses on enabling civil society organizations to contribute to promoting gender equality in Palestine, especially women's economic rights.

Metz said: "Achieving progress in the employment of women, especially women with disabilities, is one of the biggest economic, social and human rights challenges in Palestine, taking into consideration that the percentage of women's participation in the labor market during the year 2021 did not exceed 17.2% compared to 73.6% for men in the West Bank." And that only 2% of women with disabilities participate in the labor market. She added, "Half of the female graduates who hold an intermediate diploma or above suffer from unemployment, and herein lies the importance of this symposium in order to improve the institutions' interventions to improve women's employment opportunities, and promote economic growth and decent work for all."

In the first session, the participants discussed employment policies and the ministries' vision on how to implement them. The representative of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, Elham Sami, confirmed the ministry's endeavor to integrate and promote gender equality at all sectors and levels based on human rights principles.

She said, "The ministry's role includes ensuring the evaluation of the current reality, through which needs and priorities are identified, national and strategic planning, participation and networking," pointing to the most important challenges facing the ministry in operation, especially tax and marketing policies, policies related to standards and standards, and the difficulty of accessing resources and information.

In turn, the Director General of the General Department of Labor Policies at the Ministry of Labor, Azmi Al-Hajj, spoke about the impact of the occupation and its violations and its continued confiscation of natural and human resources and its impact on employment. He said: "The Ministry will work with relevant institutions and through the national strategy for employment to develop labor market programs and policies, Increasing the pace of application of the minimum wage, and working to establish a zero-interest sustainability fund for small projects.

For her part, the representative of the Palestinian Fund for Employment, Enas Qubbaj, said: "The fund works to implement general employment policies, financing services and temporary employment. It also works to provide a set of trainings for women on economic feasibility, marketing and market study."

While the representative of people with disabilities, activist Nermeen Kumi, presented, in the second axis of the symposium, a working paper on the challenges and obstacles facing them, saying: "One degree of disability is preferred over another, and discrimination against women with disabilities is doubled, due to the limited opportunities and services."

Comey stressed the need to place the needs of people with disabilities on the priority list of civil organizations, governmental and private institutions, and to integrate them in all sectors through an integrated and comprehensive plan.

As for the third session of the symposium, the participating women presented a set of challenges they face in their work, represented by the problems of opening accounts for associations, institutions and cooperatives, the imposition of exorbitant fees and financial requirements for the establishment of cooperatives, as well as the absence of actual inclusion of persons with disabilities.