Home

People at the grassroots are organized into small groups of around 30 neighborhood families to facilitate participatory dialogue in a sustained manner. (...) The State government ensures that programmes and activities of almost all its departments converge and get implemented through these neighborhood structures and their federations. The same neighborhood-based inclusive organization lends itself also to inclusive action by children for child rights. This takes the form of nearly fifty thousand neighborhood parliaments of children, and their multi-tier federation up to the state level in two States of India.

Palestinians have been resisting forced displacement, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing in various cities and neighborhoods since 1948. Today, families in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and in Silwan are fighting to save their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, more than 1,0001 Palestinians remain under threat of forced displacement from their homes and land. (...) On 16 May 2021, the IOF closed the neighborhood with cement blocks. Notably, these restrictions, do not affect Israeli settlers as they can access the neighborhood freely, even if they do not reside in it. Palestinians continued to show up in support at the entrances of the neighborhood, and they continue to be suppressed and targeted by the IOF.

The Houthi militia also bombed the Asaifra neighborhood, the Salam neighborhood, and the old airport in the Cairo Directorate with medium and heavy artillery shells from their positions in the Softel hill. In February, the HRITC’s team monitored nearly half of the dead and injured of the categories of women and children who fell at the hands of the Houthi militia, whether by artillery shelling or by anti-aircraft, which it launched on the Muroor neighborhood in the Mudhaffar district, Al-Arbaeen Street in the Salh district and the Al-Tawhid neighborhood in the Cairo district and intensified its bombardment on the Old Airport neighborhood and Bir Pasha west of the city. In March, the Houthi militia committed several massacres while bombing the Tariq bin Ziyad School in Al-Kadha neighborhood, Moqbna district, and with anti-aircraft missiles on Al- Rawda neighborhood in Cairo District, and bombing it with a mortar shell from the Faculty of Arts in Al-Aradi district, and another shell on Al-Ahkom village in Al-Shamatin District.

We offer to this Commission a snapshot of our experience, from which we have learned that greater participation leads to success at elimination of poverty and to empowerment of communities. The “neighborhood parliaments” of southern India is one creative, inclusive approach that can be widely applicable and is already echoed in practices such as the Basic Communities of Latin America, community-based monitoring and “neighborhood clustering approach” in the Philippines, and the "ayalkkoottams" or neighborhood assemblies organized in regions of India. (...) In the neighborhood parliaments promoted by NGOs, children became the agents of social change. (...) The poor women of the neighborhood parliaments had a small savings scheme and were able to function as a bank for themselves.

The extensive deployment of Israeli troops in Palestinian population centers and neighborhoods entail systematic attacks on public and private property and infrastructure and systematic acts of intimidation, harassment, and violence. (...) Accordingly, the bill would create “independent municipalities” for Palestinian neighborhoods cut off from Jerusalem by the Separation Wall. (...) The bill furthermore provides for the removal of the Palestinian neighborhoods of Kufr Aqab and the Shuafat refugee camp from the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality.

These racist laws aim to plunder the Palestinians property and steal their land. Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is a victim of the racist “Absentee Property” law that was passed in 1950 to be the main tool for controlling Palestinian property. (...) What is actually happening in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is the forcible transfer of citizens. (...) On the other hand, Israel allows Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem to continue its racist behavior against the Palestinian people, to achieve its declared goal of transforming Palestinian neighborhoods into Jewish neighborhoods to change the demographic environment in proportion to their interests at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.

In the northern town of Tripoli, fierce clashes between the two neighborhoods of Bab Al Tabbeneh and Jabal Mohsen, two rival neighborhoods which have been at odds since the Lebanese Civil War and which have witnessed renewed tensions since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, have left over thirty people dead and over two hundred people wounded. Clashes in Tripoli between these two rival factions continued since 2011 for political and sectarian reasons: while Jabal Mohsen, mostly inhabited by Alawites, strongly supports Bashar Al Assad, Bab Al Tabbaneh, a Sunni neighborhood, has pledged allegiance to factions of the Syrian opposition. (...) On August 15, 2013, another bomb went off between the neighborhoods of Roueiss and Bir El Abed, killing 246 people and injuring over 3367.

Nine out of 50 total parcels of land in the neighborhood have already been confiscated. The Palestinian residents suffer severe harassment from colonizers and many families are being forcibly transferred. (...) “Only 7% of Jerusalem Building Permits Go to Palestinian Neighborhoods”, Haaretz, 7 December 2015. 9 “Batan al-Hawa neighborhood, Silwan: The next target for "Judaization" of East Jerusalem”, B’Tselem, 11 December 2016. 10 For more information see “Forcible Transfer: The Case of Palestine: Denial of Residency”, BADIL, April 2014. 11 Israel: Law No. 5712-1952, Entry into Israel Law, 5 September 1952. 12 11(a)(2), Ibid. 13 Art 25 A/CONF.183/9, ICC, 1998. (...) Additionally, Israel also often closes the main roads of the neighborhoods, collectively punishing the residents by preventing their movement.

.: General 23 June 2021 English only A/HRC/47/NGO/210 2 The Escalation in Gaza Strip The events in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood worsened after an Israeli court issued a decision in October 2020 to forcibly evacuate twelve Palestinian families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and to transfer the ownership of their homes to Israeli settler. (...) In addition, civilians are arbitrarily detained and arrested in the El - Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and arrested by the occupation authorities, as 1,500 people were arrested and stopped unlawfully on Tuesday, May 25, 2021,2 as well as the illegal inspection campaign in Palestinian neighborhoods and the killing of civilians, whether in Gaza, Sheikh Jarrah, or other governorates and camps such as Hebron.