Women’s life after prison – Workshop with Palestinian female ex-detainees and prisoners held on 16 August 2008 in Ramallah

Palestinian female ex-prisoners, representatives of local non-governmental organizations, and activists attended a half-day workshop on 16 August 2008, organized in Ramallah by the Palestinian Counseling Centre (PCC) in partnership with Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, the Mandela Institute and UNIFEM oPt. The workshop was held as part of the “Protection of Palestinian female prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails” project and was aimed at discussing the challenges that women face when reintegrating the society. It was structured around four main topics: education, the role of media in covering female prisoners’ issues, social reintegration and professional work opportunities after prison, according to which they came up with recommendations.

The Palestinian Counseling Centre purposefully did not give a platform to experts, as the aim was for decision-makers and specialists to listen to ex-prisoners’ voices, take their recommendations and eventually act on them. Too often, they feel, have they talked in the past about their needs only to find out that no one is listening to them for their number - currently 77 and 10 000 since 1967 – almost disappears in the wave of the hundreds of thousands Palestinian men detained and imprisoned in Israeli jails.

The 17 women that participated in the workshop did not hide their disappointment when it became clear that no representative from the Ministry of Detainees or any other Palestinian Authority official responded to the invitation and actually attended the workshop. That did not come as a surprise though, as they say their hardship is almost invisible from public discourse and the broader issue of Palestinian prisoners. They noted that there are no organized programs, which would help them reintegrate into the society and make-up for the years spent without formal education, vocational training or opportunities for personal development. Furthermore, more women are now imprisoned at a younger age, with no consciousness of the real meaning of prison, which has a greater impact on them psychologically.

Overall, the workshop concluded that both ex-prisoners and their families are in great need for psychological aid, especially in the early stage after their release in order to ease tensions that their imprisonment had created. Indeed, most women affirmed that their relationship with their children has deteriorated due to the lack of visits on the one hand, but also due to their kids’ rejection of their mother caused by a sense of abandonment. “But also, no woman comes out of prison the same person” says Rawda Odeh, an activist imprisoned several times and mother of prisoners.

Physical, mental and verbal abuse they face during interrogation and later on in prison either breaks them or makes them stronger. Fighting for the protection and more importantly the realization of their human rights in prison makes them more assertive. In jail, they loose any innocence, naivety or political inexperience they might have had before, and although broken, they paradoxically come out more independent. Such a new situation is particularly hard for families to deal with, especially the more traditional ones. Thus, whereas all women perceived their imprisonment as resistance against the Israeli occupation, they see their release as a new struggle - this time against societal negative perception of female prisoners, and the affirmation of their role as women in the resistance.

Former prisoners recommended for NGO’s, UN agencies working in the occupied Palestinian territory and governmental organizations to set up reaching out programs and actively encourage them and other prisoners in the future to pursue their dreams and their education; to start a new life despite the stigma attached to female prisoners in a conservative society. Indeed, many women said that their first reaction when facing the outside world was to pack up and leave, to forget prison and the disappointment they faced afterwards. Inviting them to workshops or documenting human rights violations simply is not enough, as many released prisoners suffer from depression in the first stage of their return to normal life and find it hard to leave their house, let alone seek for help in Ramallah or other major cities. Additionally, they rarely find comfort among their friends and social networks: some women talked about their own experience of their friends’ families talking to them, since they were now “aseerat muharrarat”, “former prisoners”. Another problem is that most ex-prisoners’ families become overly protective of their daughters and are reluctant to allow them to travel by themselves and take part in activities without their supervision. Outreach thus seems to be the only solution.

Other recommendations included amongst others: the provision of textbooks and specialized educational magazines to prisons, the production of educational radio shows so that when women are released they are fully ready to absorb the “real” world and rebuild their own lives. In terms of professional life, they recommended better coordination between NGO’s and ministries to set up job-creation programs for ex-prisoners, opening up new areas of work other than those pertaining to the security apparatus as well as creating special loan programs and reducing interest rates for ex-prisoners.

To read the most important recommendations to the Palestinian Authority, local NGO's, media and institutions issued by participants of the workshop please click here.