As part of the research conducted in 2015 in the occupied West Bank - a few months after the 2014 Gaza war - for her monograph Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Insights from Palestinian Youth (Hart/Bloomsbury 2024), Institute Fellow: Rights and Social Justice, Dr Erika Jiménez worked alongside two Palestinian young person’s advisory groups.  One of the groups included six 13-year-old girls from a refugee camp.  At the time they wrote a child-friendly summary of the findings.  

Erika catches up with some of the girls who were involved in the research, in a recent video entitled Youth Voices Under Occupation - Human Rights in Palestine.  Almost 10 years on from their original participation, they share their honest reflections on the summary they wrote in 2015 and the main themes of the book, including what has changed in light of the most recent war.  The video ends with a personal message to the potential readers of the book.  The interviews in this video were recorded in August 2024.

In a blogpost, Erika explored the themes of her monograph and attempts to answer the question:

How do young people and their educators navigate the discordance between their everyday struggles for rights verses the more mainstream, UN-centric and decontextualised representations of human rights that they learn about or are expected to teach in school?

The narratives of the young people involved in the research underpin the book, giving them a voice beyond Palestine.  This book details the obstacles to rights, as identified by the young people involved.  It unpacks the intricacies of the layers of injustice and how these shaped their interpretations of human rights but also how they deployed human rights discourse as a vehicle to struggle against these very factors that sought to marginalise them. 

Watch the video below:

Subtitles available in Arabic/English, Italian, Spanish and Turkish.

If, after watching this video you would like to hear more about the book or share a short message of solidarity, you can contact Erika by email here.

 

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Palestinian videographers Elias Halabi and Jack Mansour for incredible footage and those on-screen, including interviewer Jumana Kaplanian and former research advisors Halima, Lian and Malak for their powerful words.  Thanks also to Psychology Spa for providing a safe space to record the interviews. Special thanks to Wafa News Agency for granting permission to use some of their footage and to editor Richard Summerville at the School of Law, QUB.  Thanks to Beatrice Canossi, Francisco Jiménez and Nisan Alici for their translation work.

 

Dr Erika Jiménez

Dr Erika Jiménez is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Law (being mentored by Professor Colin Harvey) and a Mitchell Institute Fellow: Rights and Social Justice, Queen’s University Belfast.  Her current project explores how the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan impacts the lives of youth from the remaining Druze communities and their views on the usefulness of human rights in their struggles for justice.  It compares Golani perspectives with those of their Palestinian peers in the occupied West Bank drawing on her previous research but also new insights from Palestinian youth from the refugee community.  It examines what youth from both jurisdictions understand about one another’s human rights situations.  The research team includes two local youth advisory groups, Golani and Palestinian researchers.  This is being done with support from Al-Marsad Arab Human Rights Center and Psychology Spa and is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.