Constitution and Pluralism: Relation to Human Rights and Access to Justice

introduction:

This project is consistent with the Institute of Law’s programmes designed for promoting the rule of law in Palestine by developing the necessary legal infrastructures, building human and institutional capacities on the academic and professional levels.

Overall objectives :
The overall objective of the project is to foster access to legal information as an integral part of the rule of law, stimulate reform initiatives, particularly to increase awareness of and expertise in human rights and gender related issues by targeted groups.

Specific objectives:
The Project will seek to achieve the following specific objectives:

• To initiate reform initiatives and debates on constitutional principles and personal status issues.
• To elucidate the rationale of the family courts judgments through experts and by subjecting them to analysis, criticism, and evaluation.
• To develop target groups skills and knowledge of the concept of gender, constitutional values, human rights and practical application. 
• To raise awareness of judges, lawyers, law students and social groups of the significance of the concept of gender. 
• To disseminate the project outputs to the project’s direct beneficiaries, CSOs, and the general public.

Duration:

1 April 2013- 31 March 2015

Doner:
Representative Office of Denmark, Ramallah

Team:
Legal Researchers, Outreach Officer, Technical Team Administrative / Support staff, Other (Contractual Services)

Outputs:

1. Research and Policy Papers

• A study with recommendations on constitutional values with focus on human rights vs. Shari’a principles. 
• A study on the Palestinian formal justice system and ramification of the duality between the civil and Family courts.
• A study on the potential role of the constitutional court in compromising substantive provisions of human rights and the personal status texts.
• A study on the evolution of personal status laws in Israel.
• A comparative study on developments and trends in dealing with personal status matters regionaly and internationaly.
• A study on the way family is constituted within both the family laws and other laws such as penal code, labour law, tax law and the consequences of such.
• Legal Comments will be prepared and pubslihed online.
• Legal Prinicples will be extracted from leading Family Court Judgments and will be published online.
• Statistics and analysis to the trends, implications, and justice delivery system using the information and data in Al-Muqtafi databases. A new statistical interface in the Family Court Judgments database will be developed.
• 4 manuals for daily issues on selected topics like alimony, divorce, inheritance, and guardian.

2. Organizing training courses for target groups (lawyers, judges and civil society institutions

3. Organizing and holding an international experts conference.