Sunday, October 09, 2011

Todos somos palestinos

Last night a friend was showing me the video she was making of the rallies in support of the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Abu Mazen's homecoming following his speech at the UN. It was full of people waving Palestinian flags and posters of the leader himself.  Many of them were wearing the black and white checkered Palestinian scarf known as the keffiyeh.

Then this morning, I was checking out a friend's blog about life on the other side of the world. Being here it's easy to forget that there are other events happening elsewhere, making similar demands for change.  So thanks, Robert, for reminding me of Chile and the efforts being made there to achieve free and fair education.

What is striking is the link between these two political struggles in the simple form of the keffiyeh, no longer a symbol of only Palestinian national identity, but of global social activism:

Some reflections on gender

At the moment I'm preparing a presentation for a workshop and the launch of a report on gender equality and development which we're hosting with the World Bank next week.  This should be interesting and details of the findings that my colleagues worked on at the beginning of the year make for interesting findings.  Granted, the fieldwork was collected in Rafah (Gaza) and Hebron, perhaps the most socially conservative part of the West Bank.  But both have to reflect Palestinian society to some degree.