Pilot activity in Palestine

— Matching official statistics with data from NGOs and research centres

The main objective of this pilot activity, conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in collaboration with research institutions and NGOs, is to reinforce capacity for large scale monitoring of participatory democracy and human rights in Palestine, with particular emphasis on the right to education.

Today in Palestine official and non- official surveys on the living conditions of the population produce important information that can and should be analyzed for purposes of monitoring rights and democratic processes.

Formulating the stakeholders' concerns

Moreover, various academic institutions, official bodies and non- governmental organization collect various kinds of data that may be relevant in terms of information on current trends of human rights implementation.

This pilot activity therefore intends to identify the most accurate available sources of information (including surveys and non-official information such as that recorded by NGOs on a case-by-case basis) and to develop a tool for integrating into a coherent and structured stock of information the sets of data provided by those sources.

The final product of this work shall be a dynamic database for systematic recording and matching of data over time. This database should provide a common basis for gathering, coding and analyzing sets of information of different sources that otherwise may remain fragmentary, anecdotal and irrelevant for large scale analysis. Such a database shall not only provide up- to date data on democracy and human rights, but also enable the derivation of time series and indicators that can be sustainable over time.

It shall be made available to the public, including the research community, to domestic policy makers -and planners, to NGOs as well as to the international community. Beneficiaries shall be involved all along the process of implementation of the activity, providing advice on the design of the database as well as receiving training on how to improve the skills for coding information, building databases, identifying and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data, using (and avoiding misuse) of indicators, and improving the skills for reporting. Both the expected local impact of this pilot activity and its potential global lessons in view to the global Metagora objectives are crucial, as the process of the activity itself and its tangible outcome should:

• reinforce professionalism, accuracy and objectivity in human rights reporting;
• encourage evidence-based research on democracy and human rights in Palestine;
• allow the production of policy-oriented reports on a continuous basis, with possible comparisons over time;
• enhance national participatory fora and promote interdisciplinary monitoring work involving official statisticians, experts from the academia and human rights practitioners;
• contribute to a clearer analysis of democracy and human rights in Palestine as well as to a more transparent and democratic dialogue.

The scope of this activity will cover the arenas of Education in the three dimensions: human rights, democracy and governance. The concrete topics it will cover are:

1. Palestinian Educational system (Pre-school: kindergarten / General Education: basic and secondary / Higher Education)
2. Education Status (Students / Schools / Classes / Teachers)
3. Availability of services and equipments in schools
4. Development of Education
5. Special Education
6. Vocational Education
7. Tawjeehi "General secondary certificate examination"
8. Literacy
9. Expenditure on Education
10. Impact of Israeli measures on the educational process
11. Impact of building the annexation and expanding wall by Israel on the Educational process