Advocacy

“Receive Your Civil Rights” Project

The Bedouin community in Taibeh suffers from very high illiteracy rate; most people do not know how to read and write and are highly ignorant of our basic rights. We do not know, for example, that we are deserving of Social Insurance rights, tax returns for those who work, parents are not aware of their children’s educational right. Elders do not realize we deserve more old age relief than we receive in practice from Social Insurance, parents to children with special needs do not know how to obtain the rights of their medically disabled children and this is due to lack of access to the institutions, lack of knowledge of Israeli bureaucracy and lack of proficiency in filling-out official forms. We feel powerless when dealing with the authorities. Moreover, the Taibeh Bedouins suffer poor treatment from the municipality in terms of the basic services they deprived of us. It should also be stated that the Bedouin pupils in Taibeh’s schools are discriminated against, and this is felt in their educational accomplishments. A study undertaken this May has shown that most Bedouin pupils suffer from exceedingly low achievements and lack of attention.

This project attempts to solve a large portion of these problems. It is intended to raise people’s awareness to rights, hold community lectures about rights, and educate people to demand their own rights from local and State authorities,

The proposed project is intended to raise awareness among the Bedouin population of Taibeh about the rights, as well as to assist our population in obtaining our rights and interacting with the authorities and bureaucracy. The project involves both assisting people on an individual level as well as coordinating and acting on a larger scale to improve the situation and status of the Bedouin community living in Taibeh.