The Team

The team is coordinated by the Palestinian Union of Social Workers and Psychologists. The Union was founded in 1996 under the auspices of the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority. Its mission is to provide regulating frameworks for clinical and professional work, to attend to the professional and developmental needs of members, and “to activate…and utilise these potentials in serving the community in a time of need”.

The coordinating team is drawn from the principal officers of the Nablus chapter, including the former and current Directors, Kamal Shuraty and Ahmed Dwaikat. The trainee workshop team is drawn from among young professionals and 4th year students of Psychology or Social Work from the faculties of both the al-Quds and an-Najah campuses. This team is trained and led by Sheena Boyle, a teacher of very long and wide experience (including extensive educational and counselling work in the Middle East), and a qualified counsellor. She is supported by Professor Nigel Osborne, pioneer of the use of music to help children who are victims of conflict (founder of ground-breaking projects in Bosnia – Hercegovina, Kosovo and the Caucasus region), and co – founder of the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development at Edinburgh University where he collaborates with the School of Medicine and Department of Psychology in research in music, medicine and trauma.

A small charity registered in Scotland, Children of Amal, has been set up as a legal and accountable vehicle for direction funds towards the work in Palestine. So far the work has been supported by small – scale fundraising and the personal contributions of volunteers.

Locations and the children

Al-Ein is a relatively small camp of 6,800 people; al-Askar has 15000 residents divided between the two sites; Balata is the largest camp on the West Bank with approximately 30,000 people. The Nablus refugee camps were founded in the years 1948-50, and many families have been resident since that time. Numbers have been swelled in the interim, however, by the arrival of waves of internally displaced persons from successive regional conflicts. They are collectively the most overcrowded dwelling places on earth. The population of Balata for example is compressed into an area of about one and a half square kilometres. There is no space for roads or alleys between the buildings; some passageways are as little as two feet wide.

These difficult conditions have become far worse for children since the year 2000 and the beginning of the second Intifada. The U.S. blockade of aid to Palestine, the impounding of customs duties and the closing of borders have dealt a severe blow to the already fragile Palestinian economy. There is an accelerating growth of real poverty.

Worst of all for the children are the regular military incursions into the camps, often at night, where there are shootings, mortar fire, abductions, killings, and frequent invasions, ransackings, humilitations and demolitions of private living spaces.

A vicious circle of military actions and reprisals preserves an atmosphere of brutalisation and radicalisation (although it is remarkable that a majority of Palestinians remain essentially moderate in their political outlook). The walls of the camps are papered with images of “martyrs”, and every boy wishes to carry a gun - a convincing imitation if not a real one. Parents, social workers and psychologists are concerned about the increase in symptoms of trauma among children, an increase in aggressive behaviour, and plummeting academic standards at school.

The work with the children in Nablus has shown encouraging results in addressing some of these problems.