Caroline Lund, PhD candidate, had the opportunity to present at the Seventh Finnish Colloquium of Middle East and North African Studies, held at Tampere University Finland in June.
The paper builds on Caroline's PhD research (which focuses on the criminalisation of civil society organisations in Palestine) and analyses how the role of international development initiatives in Palestine, as part of the detrimental “peacebuilding” agenda, has led to a weakened and dependent Palestinian civil society - and how new decolonial counterstrategies are emerging among Palestinian civil society organisations as a result.
Based on extensive secondary analysis, supplemented by interviews conducted with leading Palestinian civil society actors, the paper identified two different sets of strategies developed: one, being that some organisations are trying to become more global in their outreach, while some other organisations, conversely, are turning their focus back towards the local Palestinian communities, as a way to ensure their survival.