Addressing Stigma and Strengthening Justice for Survivors in Palestine
As the world continues to churn, new crises develop daily, and human rights violations multiply, we focus on our partnerships and opportunities to effect change at the local level. Synergy is fortunate to work with incredible locally-led organisations in 8 countries: Central African Republic, Colombia, Nepal, Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Türkiye, Ukraine, and we are continuing to develop new opportunities to work with local justice actors and civil society to field test our CARSV Stigma Toolkit for Justice.
The Toolkit is designed to help justice and civil society actors identify and reduce stigma at different stages of the justice process, from investigation to courtroom proceedings, and it contains chapters focused on the different roles of justice actors. Tools such as the Myth Debunker and the Guide to Non-Stigmatising Language are great references for both training and self reflection that help strengthen accountability and ensure survivor-centred justice in practice.
We’re currently field testing different parts of the Toolkit in 6 countries to obtain feedback from local justice actors on what works well and what can be improved. Last month Synergy team members traveled to Nepal and Istanbul to facilitate workshops with partners, and we also kicked off our project in Palestine with the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC).
WCLAC is implementing the Toolkit across the West Bank to identify and counter stigma at multiple stages of the justice process. The work combines capacity building for judicial actors with legal advocacy, trial observation, and documentation of GBV cases and strengthening survivor-sensitive referral pathways and professional practice among justice actors, lawyers, and women’s protection networks. Survivor testimonies and evidence of occupation-related violations will inform national and international advocacy, directly linking stigma to justice failures and advancing more meaningful, survivor-centred justice outcomes.
We’re excited to be accelerating our engagement with Palestinian justice actors on multiple levels. Last summer we released a report, Sexual Violence under Settler Colonialism: Structural, Political, and Racialised Violence against Palestinians, authored by Palestinian academics on the ongoing sexual violence committed against Palestinians by Israel under its regime of settler colonialism, and following that, we conducted an assessment on stigma related to sexual violence in the Palestinian justice system. We will be sharing findings from that assessment in the coming months.
Most recently, we facilitated workshops for Palestinian judges and prosecutors to introduce them to the Toolkit and also to reflect more broadly on implementing survivor-centred, trauma-informed approaches and ensuring better justice outcomes for survivors of sexual violence. The workshops raised awareness and understanding of the issue of sexual and gender based violence-related stigma in justice processes and familiarised participants with the Toolkit so that they are able to use it as (1) a resource, (2) an assessment tool, and (3) a credible base of information to debunk myths in courtrooms and when interacting with other justice colleagues. Discussion of conscious and unconscious bias, generally, and related to GBV cases, was an important dimension of the workshop to help ensure that justice actors are mindful that they may be stigmatising people without even realising it. The workshops and the joint roundtable provided a valuable space to reflect collectively on how these tools can be adapted and applied in the Palestinian context, and also how judges and prosecutors can work together to strengthen coordination and accountability for sexual and gender-based crimes.
The Palestinian context is extremely challenging due to the Israeli occupation and its devastating impacts on all forms of justice in Palestine, as well as the instability, movement restrictions, and violence that all Palestinian people are subjected to every day. Optimal working conditions for ensuring access to justice feel far away, but we are inspired by our partners’ commitment to improve courtroom experiences for survivors and reduce stigma for them, and we remain steadfast in our determination to support them.
