Following the new advocacy strategy, War Child is strengthening the links with local and international NGOs in 2008 and we are getting involved in networks and child rights forums in the oPt, Israel and in the Netherlands, in order to improve our knowledge of the situation of children’s rights in the area. We are funding two local organizations active in the field of advocacy for children’s rights, particularly those which take a rights-based approach and promote children’s participation in advocacy for their rights. We have increased the number of partners in the region from 6 to 8 and keep strengthening their capacities in the monitoring and evaluation of the projects, aiming to increase the quality of their programmes.

During our interaction with the partners in 2007, our team has become increasingly aware of the complexity of the conflict in the region and the social and cultural sensitivities involved. Our principles of neutrality and impartiality are not always easy to meet and we have come to the conclusion that they need to be defined in more detail. Furthermore, we should be more proactive in advocating child rights, especially since we are working within an environment in which they are violated on a daily base. Therefore, we have launched advocacy and awareness raising activities about child rights. An advocacy strategy has been set up and has been implemented since the beginning of 2008.

Conference
The first War Child Middle East conference took place in Petra, Jordan, in November 2007 with all six Palestinian and Israeli partners attending. The aims of this conference were increasing knowledge about each other and War Child, exchanging professional skills and encouraging networking for future cooperation of the partners. Some of the outputs of the conference were exchange visits to the projects and the exchange of different creative methods.

Research
An important highlight of 2007 was the evaluation of the work of Peace Child Israel by the specialist Karen Doubilet from the University of Tel Aviv. The research assets the change of attitude of the Arab and Jewish participants (directed involved) and the spectators (audience of the performances). According to the study, the intervention has proven to be successful in effecting positive attitude change among the students directly involved in the programme. In the case of the audience, the impact is less predominant, but the study shows a significant and positive impact on the mutual willingness for contact with the other.


Back