Rehabilitation and reintegration of child ex-detainees in their families and communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

This project was launched in January 2016 in partnership with Save the Children oPt and Defence for Children International – Palestine section. It targets ex-detainee children (up to the age of eighteen years old), their families and their communities throughout the different districts of the West Bank including East Jerusalem and aims at enhancing their psychosocial wellbeing and reintegrating them into the society. The Project adopts a holistic approach in a trial to bring children back to normal life, by targeting individuals, families and communities. The project has two main components. The first one deals with providing psycho-social support, counseling sessions and ventilation activities to ex-detainee children and their care givers. While the second component, deals with providing thorough support in the academic and vocational rehabilitation fields.

This project is seen as a continuation to the earlier efforts which started in 2007 to investigate the phenomena of child detention and assess the needs of the children once released. In response to this study, funds were raised through different resources to provide psychosocial rehabilitative and reiterative services to those children and their families. Ever since April 2009, a special program was set aiming at enhancing the psychosocial wellbeing of those children and helping eliminate the devastating impact of their detention and foster positive attitudes.

One of the main achievements of the program was the set up of the Child Detention Working Group –CDWG- in the West Bank, led by the Rehabilitation Program, with its main partners being: Save the Children International – Country Office, Defence for Children International – Palestine Section, the Commission of the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affair, the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and UNICEF. The CDWG was established by a group of capable and relevant stakeholders to come up with a better plan to approach child detention and make sure that all stakeholders are fulfilling their obligations, and being faithful to their mandate in child protection, especially after finding that the phenomena of arresting children is growing yearly and became a systemic and institutionalized by the Israeli forces.

The program targets an average of 350 child ex-detainees in addition to their families and communities each year.