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Gaza women use social media to reveal domestic abuse

In light of the rise of domestic abuse cases in the Gaza Strip, women are resorting to social media to share their stories and try to protect their rights.
Palestinian women mask-clad due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic wait with their children in a UN clinic  to take Polio vaccine and Rota virus vaccines at Bureij refugee camp in the central of Gaza Strip on September 9, 2020. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In the Gaza Strip, an increasing number of women and girls have been resorting to social media to share their experience with domestic abuse. Five campaigns have been launched by activists within two months to fight against domestic abuse. Battered women write their stories on social media, and activists then share them and work to protect the women’s rights and rid them of the violence they are subject to.

This blunt openness about domestic abuse is alien to the Palestinian society, which considers women's issues as sensitive. Such issues, seen as private, are kept away from the media as they could embarrass the concerned woman’s family in a society governed by tribalism.

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