Today, on December 11th 2008, the day that marks the 60th anniversary of the issuing of United Nations Resolution 194, we at Lajee Center would like to officially announce an exciting step in our work for Refugee Rights. We have signed a three year contract with the European Union for one of our most exciting projects to date which will see us bringing together young refugees across the West Bank to produce an ongoing magazine raising a collaborative voice of refugee youth.

Collaboration across the West Bank

Around two years ago Lajee board began discussing ideas for ways of bringing children and young people together from across Palestine through project collaboration with active centres in other refugee camps. We began to work on a proposal which was finally completed and submitted to the EU early in 2008.

The project itself will see Lajee establishing a network between active centres in six West Bank refugee camps (including Lajee Center itself in Aida Camp) working together to produce a quarterly bi-lingual magazine (in Arabic and English) including text and photography entirely produced by young refugees, aged between 13-17. This magazine is intended to provide a platform for the collective voice of young refugees to speak out both nationally and internationally whilst building strong networks of young people across the West Bank from areas that the Occupation has fragmented from each other.

Facing Logistical Challenges

Nidal Al Azzeh, Lajee Projects Coordinator, believes the project’s scope will present many logistical challenges:

“Under the unique Israeli regime of Apartheid, colonization, and belligerent occupation, it is a big challenge to gather six different centres from six different refugee camps throughout the West Bank. Similarly, gathering hundreds of refugee youth and children could be impossible, but the realization of the magazine as a collective work will be the face of success. The magazine by itself is not the goal; it is a tool reflecting the unity of the Palestinian refugee case; our plight, rights, and dreams. Such a tool will be very useful in resisting the 600+ checkpoints, the Wall and its associated regime, and the policies of injustice perpetuating the plight of refugees.”

Lajee will coordinate a team of professionals to run an intensive and ongoing workshop program in each of the six camps in subjects including Human Rights, Women’s Rights, Refugee Rights, Life Skills, Computer Skills, Journalism, and Photography, amongst others. These programs will act as a form of ongoing training to put the participants in the position to be able to produce regular articles and photo-stories about refugee issues which will be edited and published in a quarterly magazine. The magazine will be distributed nationally and internationally and it is expected that the first issue will be produced towards the end of 2009 following completion of the initial phase of workshops. Each edition will include work from children in each of the six participating centres.

For Lajee this project has been a long-term goal but also represents a huge increase in the work load that will see us building a network of professionals working across the West Bank and working with around 210 young people in 6 refugee camps by the third year. We believe this project represents a solid move to counteract fragmentation across the West Bank through creative collaboration, and to raise the voice of refugees nationally and internationally. We also regret that we are unable at this stage to include camps in Gaza, or those outside of Palestine in this project, but our work is for all Palestinians, for children, and for refugees everywhere.

Actively working for Rights

Lajee Center Director Salah Ajarma is excited about the opportunities the project creates for children to communicate internationally:

“We believe that through this project children can work for their dreams and hopes utilising their knowledge of human rights and international law. This project creates a mechanism for communication through which children can overcome walls and checkpoints creating a direct link with the wider world.”

60 years after the issuance of UN Resolution 194 declaring the Right of Return, after more than 60 years of on-going Nakba, and after the continued failure of the international community to protect and enforce our rights, we – The Generation of Palestinian Refugee – believe that through greater national and international creative collaboration we can make progressive steps towards ensuring and obtaining our human rights.

Lajee Center would like to offer our sincere thanks to the European Union for supporting this exciting new project.