People with disabilities create personal presence in digital spaces in order to build relationships and self-expression, but cyberviolence affects them like other citizens, and they may be among the groups most vulnerable in this context.

This necessarily requires intensifying the efforts of official and non-official institutions in raising awareness about these issues and working to empower women, girls and persons with disabilities with skills and knowledge on how to deal with the digital space and its risks.

In this context, the Community Media Center (CMC) works to empower and rehabilitate lawyers and young media professionals with and without disabilities, to be trainers in a series of awareness-raising meetings targeting all members of society from all governorates of the Gaza Strip on the issue of enhancing protection from cybercrime.

The Community Media Center completed the implementation of 5 awareness-raising workshops on “Digital Rights and Protection from Cyber Violence” in Rafah Governorate, in the southern Gaza Strip, in which more than 230 people of both sexes, with and without disabilities, of all age groups, including students, participated.

This came as part of the activities of the project “mobilizing society and the media to enhance women’s access to justice and security in the Gaza Strip” within the framework of the second phase of the Sawasiya project, the joint program between the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UN-WOMAN, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to promote The rule of law in the State of Palestine.

The project aims to improve women’s access to justice and enhance their rights through advocacy and awareness efforts and work to raise awareness of the concepts of gender justice, human rights and women’s rights in international conventions and combating gender-based violence, as well as raising societal awareness of the importance of cybercrime prevention, in addition to Promote civic education for children and youth.

The Community Media Center implemented awareness-raising workshops in cooperation with a number of partner institutions and universities in the governorates of Rafah, including the Friends of People with Special Needs Association, the South Association for Women’s Health, the Mujaddoon Charitable Development Association, the Hope Association for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, in addition to Al-Quds Open University.