Khaled Quzmar is a Palestinian human rights defender and the General Director of the human rights organisation Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP). Khaled Quzmar has worked for years promoting human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a lawyer representing Palestinian children in Israeli military courts. He specializes in issues of juvenile justice and grave violations against children during armed conflict.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
