Al-Shabaka policy member Nada Awad holds a master’s degree in International Relations and International Security from Sciences Pro Paris. She works on human rights violations in the Arab region as the international advocacy officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). She was previously responsible for the Advocacy unit at Al-Quds University’s Community Action Center, where she focused on the issue of forcible transfer of Palestinians from Jerusalem. She also worked as an archival researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut.
From this author
The Israeli regime subjects Palestinians across colonized Palestine to an intricate system of demographic control.
Punctuated by the outbreak of the Unity Intifada in May 2021, the trajectory of Palestinian resistance is experiencing a watershed phase marked by new actors and themes. With the effective neutralization of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the deepening geopolitical fragmentation of Palestinians across colonized Palestine and the world, and the global shift to cyberspace, new opportunities — and threats — to Palestinian resistance have emerged.
In his July 2020 report to the UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur S. Michael Lynk asserts that "Israel continues to rely upon collective punishment as a prominent instrument in its coercive toolbox of population control."
Hundreds of Palestinian, regional, and international organizations have called on the previous and current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to release the UN database of companies engaged in activities with Israel’s illegal settlements. Though the 2016 Human Rights Council resolution called for the release of the database during the 34th Human Rights Council session in March 2017, the then High Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, failed to do so – and the current High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, continues to shirk this responsibility, despite repeated pledges that it will be fulfilled.
The Israeli authorities forcibly transferred Palestinian Nadia Abu Jamal from Jerusalem in 2017, following the demolition of her family home in 2015. Israel’s National Insurance Institute also revoked healthcare and other social security entitlements from Abu Jamal’s three children, two of whom suffer from chronic medical conditions.
