Randa George Yacoub Siniora (b. 1961) is a human rights and women’s rights activist. She is the general director of the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC) in Jerusalem and has documented human rights violations across the occupied territories for more than three decades. She was the first Palestinian woman from a civil society organization to brief the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Early Life and Education
From 1965 to 1979, Siniora attended Schmidt’s Girls College in East Jerusalem, an international German school. Early in life, she noticed that males had preferential treatment in Palestinian society, which triggered her interest in women’s rights. She’s since focused on promoting feminist issues in Palestine.
In 1983, Siniora graduated from Birzeit University in Ramallah with a bachelor’s degree in sociology-anthropology and economic sociology. In 1984, she moved to Cairo, Egypt, to work on a master’s degree in sociology-anthropology at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
Her first foray into the Palestinian human rights and feminist movement was in 1985, when she was researching her MA thesis on women textile workers in West Bank factories that produced goods for Israeli companies. (The thesis was later published by AUC.1) Siniora found that
employers need not use force in order to control . . . workers. Instead, they continuously try to establish a paternalistic relationship with [them]. They try to convince them that they are in the position of their fathers at the workshop, and that they are their “supporters” and “protectors.”2
After receiving her master’s degree from AUC in 1987, Siniora worked at al-Haq—Law in the Service of Man, an independent Palestinian NGO that defends human rights in Palestine, as the legal researcher and coordinator of the Women’s Rights Program. There, she received a thorough education in the discriminatory laws, legislation, and policies that put Palestinian women at a disadvantage.
When the First Intifada began in 1987, her efforts to build a consensus around the need for legal protection of women were interrupted. As she explained, “It became impossible to focus exclusively on legal and social aspects of women’s rights, with human-rights violations taking place against Palestinian women every day. Now our main task is documenting those violations.”3
In 1994, Siniora went to the University of Essex in Colchester to complete a Master of Laws program in international human rights law. Her dissertation focused on state responsibility to protect victims of gender-based violence. Many years later, when asked to explain her involvement in women’s rights issues, she said: “I realised that official duty-bearers are complicit and violate women’s rights by omission if they do not set forth laws, policies, and measures to protect victims of domestic violence.”4
The combination of activism and academic training has made Siniora a respected voice on human and women’s rights in Palestine.
Career
From 1998 to 2001, Siniora served as the head of networking and advocacy at the WCLAC, an independent Palestinian not-for-profit NGO established in 1991 in Jerusalem by Maha Abu Dayyeh that promotes the principles of gender equality and social justice for the ultimate goal of developing a democratic Palestinian society.
According to its website, WCLAC
aims to address the causes and consequences of gender-based violence within the Palestinian community as well as the gender-specific effects of increasing militarisation associated with the Israeli occupation. To this end, WCLAC acts not only to reverse historical negligence, negative cultural legacies and discriminatory social attitudes towards Palestinian women, but also, to address the needs of women victimised by Israel’s violent actions in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT).5
In this role, Siniora focused on change at the legislative and institutional level through lobbying and documentation.
From 2001 to 2005, Siniora worked as the general director of al-Haq—Law in the Service of Man. Here she oversaw the organization’s work protecting human rights and the rule of law in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT), and built relations with Palestinian civil society organizations to ensure international human rights standards are reflected in Palestinian laws and policies.
In October 2005, Siniora was invited by the International Law Society at the Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina, to address students there. She spoke about how women are struggling with dual systems of oppression in the oPT, and how collective punishment in the form of mass arrests, house demolitions, movement restrictions, property destruction, and annexation is used by the Israeli military to exert control over the population.6
Randa Siniora, General Director of al-Haq, speaks at Duke University Law School in October 2005
Credit:
Duke University School of Law YouTube page
From 2007 to 2015, Siniora served as senior executive director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights.
Since 2015, she has worked as the general director of WCLAC. The organization emphasizes the connection between the Israeli occupation (and the discrimination and violence that it entails) and the violence against women in Palestinian society and views the national struggle in tandem with the liberation of women. In Siniora’s words:
Palestinian women have to bear the brunt of ongoing Israeli violations of human rights and [international humanitarian law] through arbitrary detention, mass expulsion, home demolition and others. Ending occupation is one of the major factors that will end [violence against women], therefore international efforts to make the occupying power accountable for its serious violations of human rights is necessary to end the culture of impunity that the occupying power enjoys.7
In this role, Siniora found that in particular, women with Palestinian Authority IDs from the West Bank who married Palestinian permanent residents of Jerusalem were particularly vulnerable to dual hardships, both as married women and if and when they tried to seek divorce (see Precarious Status).8 As for the particular and unique problems facing Palestinian women in Jerusalem, WCLAC has been gathering testimonies and personal stories from women since 2012 and makes them available on its website.9
Randa Siniora, General Director of the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, delivers a statement at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace, and Security at the United Nations in New York City, October 18, 2018.
Accolades and Achievements
For three consecutive terms, from 2008 to 2014, Siniora was the chairman of the board of directors of Defense for Children International Palestine.
Siniora was the first Palestinian woman from a civil society organization to brief the UN Security Council in 2018. She spoke on behalf of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security at the UN Security Council Open Debate on “Women and Peace and Security.” She addressed the high rate of domestic violence in Palestine, the increasing rate of femicide there, and women’s exclusion from politics:
The Israeli occupation and the resulting humanitarian crisis are deeply gendered and exacerbate existing gender inequalities. Women disproportionately endure the violence of occupation borne by all Palestinians, and often with gender-specific consequences . . . Little space has been made to integrate Palestinian women’s concerns into key political processes, including for achieving Palestinian statehood or for national reconciliation. Representation of women in key decision-making positions, including in Palestinian Authority institutions, is barely 5 percent.10
In 2019, Siniora was selected by Apolitical (which bills itself as “a private community for public servants and policymakers”) as one of the 100 most influential people on gender policy in the world.11
Published Works
Palestinian Labor in a Dependent Economy: Women Workers in the West Bank Clothing Industry. Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol. 12, monograph 3. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1990.
“Lobbying for a Palestinian Family Law: The Experience of the Palestinian Model Parliament: Women and Legislation.” Paper for the Conference on Islamic Family Law in the Middle East and North Africa, Amman, 2000.
Sources
“About Us.” Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling.
“Apolitical’s Gender Equality Top 100 | The Most Influential People in Global Policy 2019.” Apolitical.
Hiltermann, Joost R. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
“Inspirational Interviews: Randa Siniora, General Director, Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WLAC), Palestine—Part I.” The Pixel Project, September 25, 2022.
“Jerusalem Women.” Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling.
Jones, Adam. The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Ratcliffe, Rebecca. “Women in Palestine Face Violence and Political Exclusion, Campaigner Tells UN.” Guardian, October 26, 2018.
“Randa Sioniora.” Mujares al-Fuente, April 12, 2023.
“Siniora Randa, General Director of Al Haq.” Duke University School of Law, October 20, 2005.
“Statement by Ms. Randa Siniora at UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security.” Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, October 25, 2018.
[Profile photo: NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security]
Notes
1
Randa George Siniora, Palestinian Labor in a Dependent Economy: Women Workers in the West Bank Clothing Industry, Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol. 12, monograph 3 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1990).
2
Quoted in Joost R. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 29, 36.
3
Quoted in Adam Jones, The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections (New York: Routledge, 2013), 302–3.
4
“Inspirational Interviews: Randa Siniora, General Director, Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WLAC), Palestine—Part I,” The Pixel Project, September 25, 2022.
6
“Siniora Randa, General Director of Al Haq,” Duke University School of Law, October 20, 2005.
7
“Inspirational Interviews.”
8
“Randa Sioniora,” Mujares al-Fuente, April 12, 2023.
9
“Jerusalem Women,” Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling.
10
“Statement by Ms. Randa Siniora at UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security,” Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, October 25, 2018.