Rula Jamal
Rula Jamal is a Palestinian woman human rights defender. Rula focused her human rights work on the field of refugees, immigration and human rights for 12 years before joining Al-Haq as the head of Monitoring and Documentation. She has completed her double masters in human rights and international law at the university of Uppsala/Sweden and the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
Al-Haq is a Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation based in Ramallah, West Bank. The organisation was established in 1979 to protect and promote human rights and the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
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.
