Yesterday, October 10, 2022, Samar Muhareb, Chief Executive of Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), and Ihsan Adel, Executive Director of Law for Palestine (L4P), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to consolidate and give new impetus to their cooperation “in areas of shared mandates and goals.”
ARDD and L4P have been cooperating in several domains since early 2021. As part of ARDD’s Question of Palestine Program, the two organizations, along with Birzeit University, cooperated in the development and delivery in English and Arabic, of short courses on the Palestinian refugee question and a longer course on the Question of Palestine.
Since late 2021, ARDD has been a partner in the L4P initiated Jurists for Palestine Forum, which, among others, organizes regular bi-lingual (Arabic-English) webinars on topics relevant to the Palestinian quest for justice. Recent topics have included: The Antisemitism label – Between Fighting Discrimination and Silencing Critical Voices; For and Against Palestinians – Lawfare within the US Judicial System; Absence of Palestine in the ICC – Why is Palestine Deprioritized and What is to Be Done; Anti-Palestinian Racism – Motives, Manifestations and Solutions; The Palestinian Quest for Accountability – What Myanmar and Syria Could tell us.
The Forum is the first of its kind that connects and coordinates between legal professionals interested in the Question of Palestine and international law from all over the world, and is already made-up of more than 1000 jurists, lawyers, academics and activists. During its first two seasons, the Forum hosted several UN experts, decision makers, and legal authorities in order to strengthening the legal discourse on Palestine-Israel and international law locally and internationally, and bring up the capacity of lawyers on the ground.
“Palestinian youth are an important target audience for ARDD’s Question of Palestine Program” said Samar Muhareb, “and our partnership with Law for Palestine helps us expand our outreach towards young and committed Palestinian lawyers and other professionals.” Ihsan Adel added “As a young organization, L4P is honoured to be partnering with ARDD, to benefit from its expertise and experience and to walk together on the path for justice in Palestine and for the Palestinians.”
ENDS
ARDD, founded in 2008 in Amman, Jordan, is a Civil Society Organization seeking to reinitiate a new ‘Al-Nahda’ (Arab Renaissance) project to contribute to addressing the challenges faced by the Arab world in the fields of social development and justice, representing a space for dialogue, learning, and building both capacity and a better future, through empowering individuals. ARDD established its Question of Palestine Program with the aim to offer a platform in the Arab world for critical reflection with respect to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian question and the Palestinian refugee issue. As an integral part of the program, ARDD established the Global Network for the Question of Palestine (GNQP), under the patronage of HRH Prince Hassan.
L4P, founded in 2020 and registered in the United Kingdom and Sweden as a youth-led non-profit human rights organization, aims at building and creating an effective global network of legal professionals interested in the Question of Palestine, providing enriched and objective legal content on Palestine-Israel, and positively engaging the directly affected community through building their legal capacity and connecting them with the international legal mechanisms. L4P also aims to spread awareness and spark discussion regarding Palestine-Israeli occupation relevant to international law and human rights areas through presenting opposing viewpoints and laying the foundations for a comprehensive system which collects and records all materials in relation to international law and Question of Palestine.