RJI Organizes video Conference with the UN Annual gathering in Colorado
25 February 2010
Nablus - On Saturday February 20th, the Research Journalism Initiative (RJI), facilitated a videoconference between An-Najah National University and the United Nations Annual gathering in Colorado. The exchange featured Lydia De Leo, a Dutch criminologist working as a Legal and Advocacy Officer with the UNESCO Chair of Human Rights, Democracy and Peace at An-Najah, and Beesan Ramadan, an activist and an administration student at An-Najah. This event was one in a series of videoconferences between these two institutions, and part of RJI’s broader efforts to connect students of An-Najah with their colleagues in US classrooms.
Lydia de Leo shed light on the topics of Right to Education pointing out that some students have been taking long detours to attend their educational facilities and how the bad economical situation deprived students from perusing their education. "The right to education is where the future starts. Look at a map of the West Bank, the wall cuts through the West bank, those living on the western side, do not have access to come to academic institutions; freedom of movement has been harmed," said Lydia.
Lydia also explained that education is hard to access in Gaza where the educational infrastructure has been destroyed. Lydia also pointed out that students in Gaza cannot go to study in the West Bank. She told the story of a Gazan student who had gone through her education in Bethlehem and had one month left to finish her last semester, but she was deported to Gaza.
Ramadan toldl the story of An-Najah students and how the current situation not only affected them economically, but also socially and psychologically. For nine years, students had to go through the checkpoints. A tedious time that could take hours for a fifteen-minute journey.
Lydia continued her talk about the economical situation and that the unemployment increasing rates due to restrictions on Palestinians movement, which result is a very high poverty rate that directly affects education.
Views expressed at the above event and reported in this account are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of RJI or An Najah National University.
RJI’s program at An Najah National University in Nablus is designed to provide new opportunities for cooperation between Palestinian students and their counterparts across the world. RJI is a project of the Assistant to the President for International and Strategic Affairs at An Najah National University and is hosted as an independent global studies initiative at the Korean-Palestinian IT Institute for Excellence. For more information, please visit us at www.RJIPalestine.net
