*************************************************************************** The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Secretariat. *************************************************************************** AS WRITTEN United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East UNRWA UNRWA and Palestine Refugee Women Statement to the Fourth World Conference on Women by Lamis Alami Chief, Field Education Programme West Bank, 12 September 1995 Madame Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great honour to address this international forum, on behalf of UNRWA, and to talk of its achievements particularly regarding the advancement of Palestinian refugee women. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established by the General Assembly in December 1949. It was created as a temporary relief organization without prejudice to the rights of the refugees to repatriation or compensation. UNRWA's task was to give emergency assistance to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. Pending a just settlement of the Palestine problem, the General Assembly has repeatedly extended the Agency's mandate since then. The sixteenth mandate extends to 30 June 1996. During these 45 years of its operation, UNRWA functioned under extremely difficult circumstances. The 1967 war, resulting in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, led to the further displacement of half a million Palestinians. In the occupied territories, the Palestinians suffered from increasing economic hardship, legal and political restrictions and from harsh measures applied by the Israeli military and civil authorities. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising (intifada) in 1987, hundreds of Palestinians have Been killed and tens of thousands injured, arrested or detained. In Lebanon, since the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, the refugees, have suffered from violence, invasion and political turmoil. Many camps and shelters have been repeatedly damaged, causing a heavy toll of casualties and displacing thousands of families. The emergency assistance extended to the refugees, the majority of whom were women and children, in these areas of conflict included - distribution of food aid to needy refugee families. - distribution of cash assistance to refugee families who are in need, displaced or whose shelters have been demolished. - provision of expanded emergency medical services. - introduction of home-learning programme to compensate for school closures. - introduction of a general assistance programme with extra international staff whose task is to facilitate Agency operations and provide a measure of general and legal protection to the refugees. Today, UNRWA provides essential education, health, relief and social services to three million registered Palestine refugees, 49 percent of whom are women, in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area. It has a staff of 20,000 employees, more than one third of whom are women. With a regular budget of $309 million, its largest programme education, took up 47 percent of the 1994-95 biennial budget, followed by health at nearly 21 percent and relief and social services at nearly 14 percent. Formal Education The overall aim of the UNRWA/UNESCO Department of Education is to provide, within the framework of the curricula prescribed by the Host Countries, general education (9 to 10 years of compulsory education), teacher and higher education, and vocational and technical education for Palestine Arab refugees in accordance with their educational needs, identity and cultural heritage, and to maintain the continuous improvement of all levels in the education system. UNRWA operates 643 elementary and preparatory schools in the five geographical fields with a school population of 409,580 pupils. The basic schooling UNRWA offers is open to all eligible refugee children, regardless of sex. Nearly half of the pupils are girls and therefore UNRWA has never found it necessary to mount a special drive to enrol girls in its compulsory cycle of education. The UNRWA school system was one of the first educational systems in the Middle East to achieve equitable enrolment of boys and girls. The general education programme achieved gender equity as early as the 1960s. Since the majority of UNRWA's schools are sex segregated, 50 percent of its teaching staff are women. In addition, the UNRWA operates 8 Teacher and Vocational Training Colleges, with 5168 training places. In teacher training, 191 out of 360 students are women. The enrolment of female trainees in this programme has always exceeded that of male trainees. Teacher training graduates are usually absorbed in UNRWA school system. Women also benefit from in-service teacher training run by the UNRWA/UNESCO Institute of Education. In 1992/93, 457 (43 percent) of the 1,055 trainees were women. During the training year 1993/94, the number was 765, out of which 263 were women (34 percent). While all vocational/technical training courses offered by UNRWA are open to women, the proportion of women trainees, at 23 percent, is still relatively low. This can partly be explained by the reluctance of many parents to have their daughters trained in areas traditionally dominated by men, and by the reluctance of many employers to appoint women to jobs in such areas. Nevertheless, in 1993-94, 44 percent of female vocational trainees were attending courses in subjects traditionally reserved for men, including courses leading to qualifications as quantity surveyors, land surveyors, architectural draughting, mechanical engineers, assistant pharmacists and laboratory technicians. For some time, UNRWA has been trying, as a matter of policy, to increase the proportion of women trainees by offering a wider range of courses more likely to attract women, including business and office practice, computer science, physiotherapy, nursing, beauty culture, dressmaking and clothing production and home and institutional management. There are plans to introduce more courses and specialization’s attractive to both male and female trainees such as training in occupational therapy, industrial electronics, and dental hygiene. All vocational training courses include in their curriculum content an enterpreneurship course to prepare students for self employment if they opt to do so. So far 4X,()00 students have graduated from the 8 colleges, the majority of which have found ready markets in the Middle East and elsewhere. UNRWA offers a limited number of university scholarships to Palestine refugee secondary school graduates. In recent years, an increasing number of these scholarships, which are awarded solely on the basis of academic merlt, have been offered to female students. While still small, the percentage and actual number of scholarships awarded to women has increased to 30 percent. Women occupy some senior decision-making Education posts, such as Chief, Field Education Programme, Head of an Education Unit, Director of Training College and Teacher Training Specialist . Health UNRWA focuses on preventive and community health programmes which are provided through a network of 120 health units. Children and mothers are the major target group. The Agency also operates 68 dental clinics, 42 specialist clinics, 105 diabetes clinics, 105 hypertension clinics and 13 physiotherapy units. It runs a small hospital in the West Bank and has started constructing a 232-bed general hospital in Gaza. The basic community health programme covers maternal and child health care, an expanded programme of immunization, school health services, food aid to vulnerable groups, especially pregnant women and nursing mothers, family planning services, and environmental sanitation in the refugee camps (home for about one-third of the refugees registered with UNRWA). Health education/health promotion activities are provided by UNRWA staff through maternal and child care clinics, school health committees and camp health committees. These activities are considered as an integral part of the Agency's primary health care programme and are supported, in the Gaza Strip, by a family life education programme for boys and girls in preparatory schools by a special programme for environmental health aiming at planning and implementation of immediate and long-term development projects. UNRWA established a college of nursing in Gaza in order to overcome the acute shortage of trained women nurses in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and to upgrade nurse training up to acceptable international standards. The Agency is maintaining close links with universities at the local and international levels for curriculum development and improvements in clinical practice. UNRWA has also maintained and further developed a programme for basic midwifery training in the Gaza Strip in coordination with Save the Children, UK and is to start a project to establish a College of Nursing and Allied Health Professions. This would be affilliated to the UNRWA General Hospital which is expected to be in operation by early 1996. Relief and Social Services In 1989, UNRWA redefined the purposes of its relief services programmes, shifting the emphasis from direct relief to developmental social welfare. Women were especially targeted, since they make up a large proportion of the most disadvantaged among the refugees. Among the special hardship cases, for example, women account for 42 percent of the heads of household, compared with 22 percent in the refugee population at large. In most other families receiving special hardship assistance, the burden of ensuring survival in practice falls on to a woman. Women also carry heavy responsibilities in those refugee families where husbands are invalid, disabled or imprisoned. Women needed more than just basic education in order to find jobs or establish their own businesses. Economic recession and the loss of earnings from employment locally and in the region placed additional pressure on women's ability to conserve reduced income. Domestic production once again took on greater importance. And many women, politically mobilized, began to demand more information and advice on their status and rights within their own society, and to play a more prominent part in community development. UNRWA adopted three objectives for its work with these women: * enable them to acquire the skills to earn a living * help them cope better with family and social problems * facilitate the development of their role in their communities. Women's programmes have been brought into the mainstream of the restyled relief and social services programme and are no longer treated as a separate topic. Sewing centres and women's activities centres have been converted into multi-purpose Women's Programme Centres, to serve as the focal point in the refugee camps for UNRWA's work with women. The women themselves have also been brought into the planning and decision- making processes. At present there are 73 women's programme centres located mostly in densely populated areas Agency-wide. The centres are open to all women and are run by the women themselves who are organized in committees. By June 1994, nearly 10,000 women came to the centres regularly and were involved in many different activities. By request of the women themselves, the activities include a sewing programme, traditional embroidery for which Palestinian women are renowned, typewriting, flower-making, knitting, hairdressing, basic bookkeeping, and repair of household electrical appliances. Sessions in health education, first ald, environmental education, home economics, leadership training, sports and cultural events are also organized at these centres. Women who have missed out on formal education can learn to read and write in literacy courses at women's programme centres. Courses are also given in legal literacy, particularly in the areas of law concerning marriage, inheritance and child custody. Particular attention is paid to building up women's confidence in public situations and developing leadership potential. While each center has a full-time UNRWA staff member, her role is to facilitate decision-making by the women themselves and to support their efforts to mobilize resources. The women's programme centres support poor women in other ways. Each center has a creche and many are attached to a pre-school facility, run by specially trained women from the camp. The center kitchens are available for joint preparation of meals which women attending courses can then take home. Several centres have "adopted" impoverished elderly women, making sure they receive a daily meal and that their other needs are met. Social workers are assigned to the center’s one or two days a week for individual or group counselling and for home visits to women in need. WPCs provide an important forum where community workers, social workers, community health nurses, educators and others can meet with the women to discuss and share common issues, and plan action. Group income-generation schemes among the women have begun. Women are eligible for grants and loans to establish or build up productive enterprises, individually or in groups. Training and other forms of technical support are geared to women's special needs. A donation of capital to launch a "Palestinian Women's Initiative Fund" has enabled the Agency to direct more resources to women establishing their own businesses. UNRWA is an equal opportunities employer. Women are welcomed as job applicants and are given every encouragement and opportunity to rise within the organization. Overall, there are ó,593 female staff members - 34 percent of the locally recruited personnel. Many of those employees are teachers, doctors, nurses and welfare workers. UNRWA provides women with an opportunity for economic independence. Many of them have gone on to work for governments and other organizations. The historic developments that took place during the last two years had a profound impact on the work and responsibilities of UNRWA. With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area and the anticipated extension of self-rule to the rest of the West Bank, UNRWA entered a new era in its relationship with the Palestinian people. Thenceforth, in addition to maintaining the services that it had provided for over 45 years, the Agency began to prepare a forward- looking response to support the peace process in the changed environment which would emerge in the self-rule areas. Immediately following the signing of the Declaration of Principles, UNRWA made a preliminary identification of projects that it could undertake to help improve social and economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to improve the physical and social infrastructure which would be turned over to the Palestinian Authority in the future and to create critically needed employment opportunities to help reduce the dangerously high rate of joblessness.