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MA'AN Newsletter: Developmental Focus ISSUE 03 VOLUME 01 August 2010

This is a handbook for those embarking on an assessment of how to best assist human rights defenders either in a particular country or a region within a country. It is intended to guide a team in executing an assessment of how to create effective programs (e.g. capacity building training, financial assistance, advocacy support, etc) to assist human rights defenders (HRDs). Such a sensitive and critical program demands a tailoring to the needs and desires of the human rights defenders themselves and to the nuances of the country.

One month after the deadly attack on the humanitarian flottilla heading to Gaza, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) releases a new position paper on the illegality of the closure imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and its alleged ‘easing’.

It is clear that improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in the foreword to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, issued on 23 June. But even though the economic crisis took a heavy toll on jobs and incomes around the world, the world is still on track to achieve the MDG target of cutting the rate of extreme poverty in half by 2015, the report notes.

Democracy: With Women, For Women presents an overview and brief analysis of the first round of grants issued by UNDEF in partnership with UNIFEM. Both organizations are engaged in advancing gender equality and democratic governance around the world. The following pages probe, in a concise fashion, what was achieved through seven grants to improve women’s political participation in a diverse set of countries and regions."

This document says that more than half of all children who are out of school in the world today live in conflict-affected fragile states (CAFS) – 39 million children out of a total of 72 million children who are not in school. While there has been an impressive reduction in the overall number of children left out of school since 2006, progress has been much slower in CAFS.

Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) is a non- governmental, non-profit organization, established in 1990. GCMHP works in the fields of mental health and human rights to promote the Palestinian society to a high level of community mental health through providing psychological, social, training, research, lobbying and advocacy services for children, women, and victims of violence and human rights violations.

Women for Life was established in 2002, the year in which the apartheid wall construction began in the Salfit region. We began with three women giving workshops on the wall and its effects on society. Now we are 150 women peace activists from surrounding villages who are dedicated to informing Palestinian women about the apartheid wall and its social, economical, and psychological effects. Women for Life was licensed in 2004.

Donor funds are the lifeline of NGOs in developing countries. It is a fact that if there were not many donor funds available from developed nations, there would not really be so many organizations, as we see today. The NGOs have mushroomed more out of the supply of aid than out of the demand for more work with the community. Nevertheless, it is also a fact that these donor funds have tremendous limitations and restrictions that sometimes challenge the very ideals of social work. NGOs have known to implement projects based on certain conditions imposed by the donors.

Covers the work of DCI-Palestine's implemented programmes in 2009, and provides information about its main achievements in protecting Palestinian children's rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.