Over recent decades, Israel has become a target destination for tens of thousands of migrants: asylum seekers1 fleeing wars, massacres, and oppressive regimes and migrant workers seeking to improve their standard of living. Israeli law permits the detention of any person who does not have status in Israel, provided that the detention is not for a punitive purpose, but serves as a tool intended to enable removal.
This report aims to be one of the first comprehensive reports that monitors the conditions of migrant detention centers in Israel. As the laws around detention have only grown stricter in recent years, it is not out of the realm of possibility that detention will continue to be a major tool in the Israeli government’s policy towards migrant-workers and asylum-seekers.
A new report on the Holot facility exposes; substantial asylum requests of detainees rejected by Israel now about to be jailed in Saharonim indefinitely, grave shortcomings in food, rights violations in the form of punishment
In cooperation with the organizations Itach-Maaki and Agenda, The Center for the Advancement of Women in the Public Sphere (WIPS) in the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute is spearheading the project to formulate an Israeli action plan for the implementation of UNSCR 1325. Many countries have already succeeded in implementing a national action plan (NAP) for increasing women's participation in processes of conflict resolution. This initiative builds upon the experience in other countries in formulating an Action Plan that is relevant to the Israeli context.
