Forum Chairperson: We value Egypt’s role in containing the conflict and refuse to clear the Palestinian issue by displacing the population to Sinai
The forum condemns the displacement of 914,000 people, including 5000 women to non-human shelters
Top 50 Women Forum Launches Initiative To Document The Stories Of Victims And Displaced Persons In The Face Of Deliberate Obliteration Of War-Related Realities In Western Media
Forum To Launch Global Assistance Campaign for Women To Define Priorities Related to Emergency Assistance Packages
Western Media’s Double Standard Approach Gave Cover To Israel’s Crimes, Distorting The World’s View Of The Real Tragedy Of War
Top 50 Women Forum Calls on Western Media Platforms to Adopt Balanced Professional Standards to Ensure Communicating Facts and Get Voices Against War Heard
Documenting the stories of victims and displaced persons To Serve as an indisputable guide to holding Israel accountable for its crimes: Dina Abdul Fattah
Top 50 Women Forum Calls on All Global Women’s Action Organizations to Join Forces to Provide Explicit Support to Palestinian Women Through the Global Campaign Against Violence
Top 50 Women Forum decided to devote the purpose of all its events that will be held conceding with the global campaign “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” to support Palestinian women and combating the bloody violence to which Palestinian women are subjected in general and in the Gaza Strip in particular. The forum condemned the unprecedented violence against women and children in Palestine, which is taking place and witnessed by the whole world and international organizations without making a move.
The forum stressed during its first events, which took place in parallel with the “16 Days of Activism campaign that the Israeli occupation army had committed the largest and most despicable massacre and genocide. Such a human tragedy that modern history has never been witnessed before, as the Israeli forces perpetrate violence in all its forms and implement a policy of collective punishment and systematic extermination crimes against the citizens of the Gaza Strip. The record pace of civilian casualties from Israeli bombing is on a steady rise.
It is a war in which all kinds of crimes against unarmed civilians have been allowed; meanwhile, most of the victims have been women and children. The number of martyrs surged to more than 14854 Palestinians, including more than 6150 children and more than 4000 women. Further, 10,000 people- most of whom are women and children- are still missing under rubble-strewn homes left by the Israeli massively destructive rockets.
Top 50 Women Forum strongly condemned the displacement action in the Northern side of the Strip, as over 914 people were displaced, including more than 5000 pregnant women.
The UNRWA’s report reads those who were forced to leave their homes and move to the unknown in extremely tragic circumstances. They have been displaced under a stifling blockade, being deprived of basic elements of life: water, food, electricity, and communications. Accordingly, this made displaced persons’ lives unbearable.
Hence, the forum’s board decided to take several instrumental steps that would effectively alleviate the catastrophic consequences of this unprecedented human tragedy, most notably, the call for producing a documentary about the war crimes carried out by the Israeli occupation army against the women and children in the Gaza Strip, along with the northern and southern West Bank, the camps of Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, and other occupied Palestinian territories.
Thus, the Forum confirmed that these incidents should be documented as war crimes are imprescriptible.
Documenting the stories of the Palestinian heroines, and victims, as well as missing and displaced women is a must since they are not just figures to be presented on the media platforms, but lives and stories deserve to be told and immortalized as human icons who have sacrificed their lives and lost their most cherished sons, spouses, and even homes to establish an independent State of Palestine since June 5th, 1967.
The forum has also decided to conduct media campaigns to call on the Western media to adhere to professional standards, so as to ensure the freedom of expression for all opinions in the Gaza Strip.
Western media proved its non-commitment to the freedom of expression, regarding the media coverage of the ongoing war, which reflected a blatant imbalance and violation of professional standards, and disinforming humanity about the disaster and the catastrophe that have been caused by the Israeli occupation army.
Western media chose to show the pro-war side and ban the war’s opponents from revealing the realities, which gave a cover to Israel in the media and supported its crimes against humanity, specifically women and children.
“Choosing this theme for the events is the least effort that can be exerted by any women empowerment NGO, especially during such exceptional circumstances and unprecedented violence against Palestinian women.”, stated the forum’s Founder and Chairperson, Dina Abdel Fattah.
Dina called on all the global women’s empowerment organizations around the world to take the same approach and devote all their efforts to combating violence against Palestinian women and to declare clear and explicit support for them and their right to a safe life.
This step will be in an effort to impose international civil pressure to stop the physical, moral, and psychological oppression suffered by women in Palestine. The Chair of the Forum noted that the 16 Days of Activism Campaign 2023 had adopted the slogan “No excuse”.
The essence of that slogan could be used for the suffering of Palestinian women since there is neither any excuse for their unimaginable suffering nor any excuse for the international community institutions to remain idle towards the continuation of such crimes.
She also lauded the role of the Egyptian leadership in confronting this aggression and mitigating its repercussions facing the residents of the Gaza Strip.
In a related context, Abdel Fatah emphasized the paramount importance of documenting stories and crimes that have occurred and continue to occur in Palestine and telling the life stories of Palestinian heroines in the face of aggression and the scale of crimes and abuses to which they are subjected to establish their independent state; noting that the documentary will remain a visual record that can be used to prosecute the leaders of this war later, as has been demonstrated by history on many pages since these heinous crimes cannot go unaccounted for or be inalienable.
The forum also mulls launching a global campaign to identify priorities for women in the Gaza Strip and the inclusion of humanitarian assistance for women during the post-war period and in humanitarian armistice periods; to raise the awareness of the donor organizations about the quality of assistance that needs to be provided for women and children in particular to protect them from the risk of death that could be caused by the spread of diseases and epidemics that are already emerging among the displaced due to the lack of medical supplies and living in severe overcrowding within shelters and schools in the absence of water and personal hygiene, not to mention the spread of unburied bodies, which could lead to emergence of infectious diseases among internally displaced persons.
In this context, the former Deputy Governor of CBE, Lobna Helal, stressed the necessity of coordinating sustainable assistance delivery is essential in mitigating the effects of this aggression, especially on almost 1 million displaced persons, most of whom are women and children.
She also referred to the urgency of the effort to stimulate coordination and integration between donors and governments to ensure the sustainable flow of assistance and to ensure the diversity of such assistance and its suitability for the strip’s inhabitants, especially pregnant women, as a recent report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) indicated that there were more than 5,000 pregnant women among the displaced.
Helal stressed that Palestine’s women were putting the whole of humanity to a difficult test between stopping this tragedy and protecting unarmed civilians, women, and children unconditionally, or subjecting them to other inhumane standards that would perpetuate such suffering, calling on all organizations of the international community and governments to carry out their tasks without double standards.
On the other hand, Eng. Sarah El Battouty – ECOnsult Founder and Global Ambassador UNFCCC High-Level Climate Champions- stressed the importance of prioritizing women in humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip population and providing medical care for them.
El Battouty warned against the risk of spreading epidemics and diseases as a result of overcrowding in shelters and the absence of essential elements of life. She highlighted that Palestinian women, especially in the Gaza Strip, had lost their full health and human rights as a result of the Strip’s discharge from hospitals, which was a threat of catastrophe, especially for pregnant women and those with chronic illnesses.
For her part, Eng. Nermin Abdul Fattah, MD of Exlnt Communications, criticized the double-standard approach adopted by the Western media in providing media coverage about the crimes that had been committed in the Gaza Strip.
She said that the widespread influence of Western media conceals the facts of that war and does not allow opponents to appear and explain them had distorted the image of the world’s public consciousness, which gave Israel legitimate cover for the conduct of its crimes through a false international cover of what is happening, and led to obliterating the realities of the occupation army’s military operation against defenseless civilians. Hence, the documentary that the Forum seeks to produce is important.
In turn, Soha Soliman, Chief Executive Officer at AUR Leasing, said that the tragedy of Palestinian women was unprecedented, as more than 70% of the victims of the bombing and about 80% of the displaced are women and children, which she regarded as a humanitarian disaster in every sense.
She stressed the need for women’s organizations in the world to join forces to demand a halt to this aggression. She also called for allying to pressure governments to provide adequate assistance to displaced persons to alleviate the impact and consequences of the war. She stressed the importance of the forum’s initiative to document the stories of victims and displaced persons as eyewitnesses to these crimes, given the deliberate obfuscation of the facts related to this war.
Concluding the roundtable, Amal Saad – CEO of Riva Pharma- said that preventing the medical sector from providing services in the Gaza Strip was unprecedented in the history of war, which could be a threat to cause more severe catastrophe than the war itself in case of an outbreak of epidemics and diseases as a result of mass displacement and the overcrowding the displaced persons in non-viable places. It also heralds another disaster for chronic diseases of cancers, kidney failure, and other diseases that require sustained medical follow-up. health care “, as well as medical services for gynecology, follow-up of pregnant women, and delivery processes.
She also urged to sustain the regular supply of medicines and supplies to the sector in large quantities to contain the effects of the crisis, she called for coordinated action to achieve sustainability in medical supplies through the formation of a coalition under the umbrella of the WHO, the United Nations, donors, and companies to identify priorities and quality of medical assistance and the quantities required and ensure their sustainable flow to support and rehabilitate the rest of the sector’s hospitals.
