2014 Human Development Report Read for Palestine

On November 24, 2014, the Birzeit University Center for Development Studies and the United Nations Development Programme - Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People held a joint workshop on the Palestinian reading of the UN’s 2014 Human Development Report.

“This workshop occurs amid a Palestinian debate on the political realities on the ground, starting with the last aggression on Gaza, which remains a devastation,” said Vice President for Community Outreach Samia Halileh in her opening address, “as well as Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank in terms of land confiscation, settlement construction and all forms of violence against Palestinians.”

Center for Development Studies director Laura Khoury said that this workshop is part of an intellectual and social dialogue on development in occupied Palestine conducted by the center, which has sought for 17 years, since the center’s inception, to focus on themes and crises that have happened after the Oslo accords to the present.

United Nations Development Programme adviser Sufian Musha’sha’ underscored the center’s role as an incubator for dialogue. Speaking about the Human Development Report, Musha’sha’ pointed to vital issues addressed in the report, especially issues of resilience and vulnerability and to what extent they are applicable to the Palestinian case.