Law for Palestine and Tamkeen Hold a Capacity Building Program for Palestinian Female Lawyers
Law for Palestine, in partnership with Tamkeen organization, concluded a six-day capacity building program on “legal personality and public sphere influence for Palestinian female lawyers.” The program was held over the course of three weeks, with a total of 14 hours, during the month of October 2022.
The program, held remotely, was attended by Palestinian female lawyers and jurists from both the occupied Palestinian territories and within the Green Line. The program dealt with important practical topics that were presented for the first time in Arabic, such as personal and professional self-development for female lawyers, keys and tools for effective communication, mental health of lawyers, dealing with the media, and community participation, as well as how to manage the lawyer’s professional success and value-creation.
The program sessions were delivered by a group of distinguished lecturers and trainers, namely: Rawan Husseini, a lawyer and a media and consultant with the UN Women; Ali Thiab, one of the most prominent sales and value-creation experts and trainers in the Arab world; Abeer Baker, a lawyer and human rights defender, and a teaching assistant at Haifa University; Lynn Al-Khayyat, a criminal and human rights lawyer; Dr. Khaled Haddad, a renowned management and human development expert in the Middle East; Enas Zayed, a Jordanian human rights lawyer and owner of the Enas Zayed Law Firm; and Fardous Salameh, a lecturer of psychology at Birzeit University and a mental health coach.
The program was designed to nurture female lawyers and jurists’ needed skills with regards to the legal personality, dealing with the professional and public spheres, leadership, and tools of public and professional influence. The program paid a special attention to the importance of mental health and how to manage, and balance between, professional and personal life while avoiding burn-out and hyper-stress.
According to Ihsan Adel, Chair of Law for Palestine, this program focused on the silent part in a lawyer’s career; the personal and private aspects including their mental health, balancing their professional and personal lives as well as the character qualities that lawyers need to develop for both professional and personal success.
Adel further pointed out that this is even more significant for female lawyers in the Middle East, considering they are usually subject to societal, professional and personal pressure and prejudice that their male counterparts do not face. This pressure and prejudice have led to the scarcity of female leaders in professional environment and public spheres, Adel added.
He finally emphasized that there needs to be more of these capacity building programs to build a better future for female lawyers in the region, and that Law for Palestine will continue to work to that end.
