heks

In a region where life is marked by long-standing conflicts, HEKS is keen to promote peace based on justice and the observance of human rights. On the one hand, severe restrictions on the rights of the civilian population are one consequence of the conflict. On the other, they are a hindrance to any lasting peace settlement, as the occupation drastically restricts the mobility of the people in the occupied Palestinian areas. The dividing wall in the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza are hampering their access to land and resources and making it difficult to provide for such basic needs as education and health. The illegal building of settlements and the increasing destruction of houses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are displacing increasing numbers of people from their land and their houses.

Those suffering the most at the roughly 1.8 million refugees and internally displaced persons now living in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel. The most of them are descendants of the refugees who had to leave their villages in 1948 and 1967 and to this day are still awaiting a permanent solution. Fifty per cent of the Palestinian population is under 20 years of age and it is primarily young people who are hardest hit by the high unemployment.

Aims, points of focus, inititatives:

HEKS is keen to contribute to effective and sustainable conflict transformation that is based on international law. To this end civil society players are being empowered so that they can help overcome the existing situation of conflict and inequality by non-violent means.

1. Analysing and tackling the roots of the conflict: The civil society organisations being supported by HEKS are analysing the causes of conflict such as racism and inequality, the unresolved refugee problem or the militarisation of the society in order to tackle them from a human rights standpoint. They are raising public awareness and calling on those responsible to respect human rights. Through the Open Forum – a network for Jewish and Palestinian organisations in Israel as well as organisations in the occupied Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem – HEKS provides its partner organisations with a platform for interchanging ideas, and planning and implementing joint projects.
2. Protecting the civilian population and participation in decision-making processes: HEKS and its partners are helping to protect the civilian population as well as human rights advocates and peace activists, for example, through accompaniment by international human rights observers under the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). Human rights courses are arranged, familiarising target groups with their rights and enabling them to formulate and demand the fulfilment of their needs. To that end, they form alliances with local and international partners.
3. Improved access to land, reasonable living conditions and public space: HEKS focuses its human rights work on access to land and reasonable living conditions for all. The Open Forum is intended to serve as a framework in which to develop and publish fair alternatives to the current unjust practices, so that everyone is guaranteed access to land and reasonable living conditions as well as participation in the public space.