WUNRN
ISRAEL - STORY OF IMPLEMENTATION OF
UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325
Photo: ShellyS
October 31, 2011
By Adv. Anat Thon Ashkenazy, Itach Maaki -
Women Lawyers for Social Change
UN Security Council Resolution 1325, of October 31,
2000, sent a significant message to many countries, including
Implementation of the Resolution in
After the resolution was ratified, many
women in
Lack of implementation of the Israeli Law
Even with the great policy achievement of the law’s ratification, the law
remained a formal declaration and was not at all implemented for a number of
years. It was understood by women’s organizations that there were no
mechanisms set up to implement the law and, even more than that, it seemed that
the government did not recognize the importance of the broad social principles
on which the law is based.
Because of this situation, the NGO Itach-Maaki
Women Lawyers for Social Justice – an Arab-Jewish non-profit
working to include voices of marginalized women in the public discourse – made
the decision to work toward the advancement of the implementation of the
law. In order to reach this goal, Itach-Maaki approached the Heinrich
Boell Stiftung
First Steps Toward Implementation: Raising
Awareness on the Law’s Principles and Implementation
After
acting to increase the awareness about the law, which did not advance its
implementation, Itach-Maaki decided to initiate petitions to the Supreme Court
against the government’s violation of the law. The first petition
submitted, together with a number of other organizations, was against the lack
of appointments of women to The Goldberg Commission, which was mandated to make
recommendations on the settlements of the Bedouin population in the
Main obstacle toward implementation:
Representation of women in security issues
It is
important to emphasize that the opposition by the government against
implementing the law emanates from a number of reasons and is strongest when
demands are raised to appoint women in fields that are related to state
security and foreign relations. In these cases, the challenge in
expressing the importance of appointments of women is especially difficult, and
yet crucial to overcome. Related to this, the petition submitted by
Itach-Maaki to the Supreme Court regarding the lack of appointment of women to
the committee established to evaluate the
Subsequent to the Supreme Court decision, the significant change in the number
of appointments of women to public bodies was very apparent; now, there are
simply no more all-male committees appointed. Most committees include
women, even if not in equal numbers to men. Even when teams were
beginning to be established to negotiate with the Palestinians, approximately a
year ago, the government agreed to appoint women to the teams. This was
in response to the demands of women’s organizations, led by Itach-Maaki.
Another achievement made is the increased commitment of the government to
report on the establishment of public committees and teams to the Authority for
the Advancement of the Status of Women – the public body mandated to implement
the law. In the past, despite a clear demand to report on the
appointments of every public body established, there was no information
transmitted. Furthermore, there were no sanctions put into place for this
lack of reporting. However, today there is a significant increase in
transfer of this information to the Authority for the Advancement of the Status
of Women, which is under the Prime Minister’s Office. Moreover, the
precedent-setting Supreme Court verdict sparked a series of legislative
amendments that were directly influenced by UNSCR 1325 and its
principles.
Lack of representation of women from diverse
population groups
Alongside
the significant progress in implementation of certain aspects of the law, there
is not yet an expression of the law’s demand for representation of women from
diverse population groups in public bodies. This situation can be
explained by the following status quo: 1. lack of political power of diverse
(and especially marginalized) sectors of the population and 2. hardship
in implementing this aspect of the law.
It is important to note, that amongst women’s organizations, there is debate
regarding the method for implementing the law and questions have been raised
about whether public bodies established by the government are able to implement
the demand for diversity. Among other things, this is because of the fact
that certain marginalized population groups do not recognize state bodies as
legitimate and are not trusting of them or their recommendations.
This is relevant to the most recent petition submitted by Itach-Maaki to the
Supreme Court in August 2011 against the Prime Minister and the Trajtenberg
Committee, established to examine the broad socio-economic situation in the
country. The committee was established as a response to the social protests that washed
over the country during the summer, bringing out hundreds of thousands of
Israeli demonstrators from broad population groups demanding to change the
socio-economic priorities of the country’s leadership and to decrease the cost
of living in the country. Women were appointed to the committee, however,
there was no expression of the diversity aspect of the law. Especially
apparent was the lack of Arab women on the committee, despite the clear fact
that the changes demanded relate to the distinct needs of diverse population
groups. On this background, Itach-Maaki created a coalition of 13
organizations – Jewish and Arab rights’ organizations including many women’s
organizations – that joined together to demand that an Arab woman be appointed
to the committee, via Itach-Maaki’s petition to the Supreme Court. In
response, the government took an unprecedented step and appointed an Arab woman
to the committee. This was an overwhelming achievement for the feminist
battle in the country, a step toward advancing the rights and perspectives of
women who are not a part of the ruling hegemony in Israeli society.
Changes in the State Attorney’s Guidelines
In response to the success of the August 2011 petition and the
transformation of the public discourse regarding representation of women from
diverse population groups, the
State Attorney announced that he will amend his guidelines to government
offices to include specific instructions on how to best implement the law and
to include women from diverse population groups on public committees.
This is a breakthrough for the implementation of the law and the potential to
include voices of diverse women in policymaking, especially those who have
rarely been heard in the past.
Future Step: National Action Plan for Implementation of UNSCR 1325
The process that brought about the integration of principles of UNSCR 1325
into Israeli law initiated a significant change in gender equality in
These goals, in their broadest meaning, can
be optimally expressed by the adoption of a tool that many other countries
nationwide have been utilizing to implement UNSCR 1325: A National Action
Plan (NAP) based on the principles of UNSCR 1325. This type of plan
will include a multi-dimensional strategy that will have the potential to pilot
a true revolution for women and gender equality in
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Adv. Anat
Thon Ashkenazy, is leading the project: Women's Voices = Women's
Impact on the implementation of Amendment 4 of the Equality of
Women's Rights Law of the NGO Itach-Maaki Women Lawyers for Social Change, in
partnership with the Israel office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.
This article was translated to English by Lesley Benedikt of Itach-Maaki.
Itach
Maaki - Women Lawyers for Social Justice is a non-profit organization
that aims to create social change by using the law to address the needs and
rights of women from the social, economic and geographic periphery of