Ever since the Oslo accords of 1993, The city of Hebron has been divided under two administrative areas. Hebron H1 spans the most part of the historic city and is inhabited by roughly 170.000 Palestinians. The second area, Hebron H2, falls under the jurisdiction of the Israeli army and is inhabited by 34.000 Palestinians and 700 Israeli settlers.

In the divided area of Hebron City H2 the Palestinian population is constantly monitored with surveillance technology such as camera- and radar surveillance, facial recognition and smartphone technology. In addition to living under military law, they face constant threats and acts of violence. For example, their more than 900-year-old olive groves are constantly being attacked and set on fire by settlers, who can do so without fearing arrest by the Israeli Defense Force.

Olive trees

The olive harvest in Palestine takes place every fall, making this a crucial time in the lives of the many Palestinian families who rely on it for their income. Between August of 2020 and 2021, more than 9,300 olive trees were destroyed in the West Bank. Since 1967, a total of 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted by Israeli authorities and settlers. Destroying olive trees is a known tactic of settlers tin order to uproot the Palestinians from their soil, since it takes years to replant olive trees that can produce the same yield as mature ones.

This is why AAH (Artists x Allies x Hebron) placed surveillance cameras throughout the olive groves of H2. These cameras will livestream footage of the trees, in order to register settler violence. This way, the cameras are staring back into the unending electronic gaze if the IDF by co-opting the same weaponized technology. AAH wants to help keep a vigilant eye on these trees and show solidarity by ensuring that the residents and their sumud (steadfastness) are not only surveilled but also seen.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support this action. Want to see the live footage? Click here!

Capitalism, patriarchy and the border regime are leaving many people, in particular racialized women and genderqueer people, exposed to exploitation, violence and exclusion. Systematic racism and sexism silence their struggles, portraying them as victims and minimizing their political voices and actions. When it comes to migration and border crossing, women and genderqueer people experience specific difficulties that should be acknowledged and addressed.

This is why Collectif Sensé is uniting women from Mali, Mauritania and Senegal and women in France, most of them with a migration background. They are organising a weekend to share skills, discuss important issues and hold assemblies to organize future actions and events. They will also make a podcast and a radio program in different languages to address the realities of women within the current border regime. Topics that will be covered include the trafficking of women, feminist self-defence and transborder solidarity.

This project is a collaboration between Collectif Sensé, a group of women that met in a safe house in Marseille, and the AlarmPhone, a hotline for people crossing the Mediterranean Sea who are in distress. You can listen to their monthly radio program in French here.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support this project, because borders kill — every day.

Lodewijk K. may own multiple horeca business in Amsterdam, his wealth doesn’t prevent him from refusing to pay two his workers their due. Horeca United won’t allow him to get away with this. They’ve organized multiple picket actions to pressure hem into paying.

For the time being, the picket actions seem to work. At first he did not even want to discuss the matter, but after two picketing actions where customers were informed of Lodewijks business practice, the exploitative employer agreed to sit down and negotiate. He has consistently tried to undercut offers of Horeca United and has offered insultingly low amounts to compensate his two former employees. Eventually he gave in to one of the two wage claims.

Obviously, this is not enough: the two workers won’t settle for less. So, they gave their ultimatum: pay up, or we are forced to take action. For now, this means action. Het Actiefonds is supporting their next picket actions. No boss should get away with refusing pay!

Transition is a positive step that brings trans people much happiness, because in this way they can take control of their own life. It is therefore all the more odd that trans people are dependent on health care institutions and psychiatrists, who often make them wait for years before they can continue with their transition. In the Netherlands it is still necessary to be diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ by a gender team to get your transition insured. As a result, the total transition process now takes an average of 7.5 years.

The slow transition process causes a lot of unnecessary stress. This is why Transzorg NU is standing up for the self-determination of trans people. You should not have to get a diagnosis before you can get the care you deserve. Therefore, replace the psychiatric diagnosis ‘gender dysphoria’ from the DSM5 with the somatic-body diagnosis ‘gender incongruence’ from ICD11. Indeed, this diagnosis has no pathological focus on suffering or the stigmatizing psychiatric status. Instead, it places the enduring conviction of gender identity at the center. For all the requirements of Transzorg NU, please visit here.

Transzorg NU Nijmegen – September 18.

Nijmegen is an important place for transition care in the Netherlands: besides Amsterdam UMC and Groningen UMC, Radboud UMC is the only academic hospital with a gender team. Meanwhile, even there the waiting time has increased to more than two years. That is why Het Actiefonds supports the new branch of Transzorg NU in Nijmegen.

On September 18, Transzorg NU plans to demonstrate in the afternoon at the Grote Markt in Nijmegen – right in the middle of the city center. They will use a combination of fiery and vulnerable speeches, and artistic performances. From a stage – provided with beautiful decor made by Nijmegen artist duo Naaistreek – substantive speeches will be made. Bappie Kortram, for example, will speak about how transition care is often denied to fat individuals. Others will speak from their own experience about, among other things, the intersection of trans and neurodiversity, the hard life as a trans person in Dutch asylum seekers’ centers, and the importance of quick help for young trans persons. And they will hand over their demands to the Radboud UMC. Furthermore, a group of non-binary dancers will give a performance. There will be singing, and their own Suus te Braak (aka ‘DJ Hizzle’) will play between performances.

During the G-20 forum, sustainable finance and green economy issues will be discussed, in an attempt to address the climate crisis. Yet, the G-20 paradigm of capitalism and growth will never be compatible with environmental and social justice. Their policies will always have negative impacts on the everyday life of people in Indonesia and elsewhere, affected by “solutions” such as infrastructure development that eliminates livelihoods, the conversion of agricultural land or poverty caused by state debt. By organising the Y-20, the G-20 countries make it appear as if the international youth movements are with them and have been sufficiently consulted.

However, across Indonesia, youth groups demand a just climate transition and intergenerational justice that goes way beyond the proposed course of action. This is why WALHI Jakarta organised an Anti-G20 Youth Camp with 400 participants, and will mobilize youth groups to protest during the Y-20 and G-20, to make clear that this forum does not represent the voices of youth and is still co-opted by global agendas that marginalize people all over the world.

WALHI Jakarta (The Indonesian Forum for Environment in Jakarta) is an organisation that fights for the realization of a just and democratic social, economic and political order that can guarantee the rights of the people to sources of life and a healthy and sustainable environment. They organise several activities around preservation, critical education and skillsharing, community organizing, campaign and research, litigation, building civil society alliances and public support.

Het Actiefonds is proud to support WALHI Jakarta to organise against the G-20 and stands in solidarity with all climate justice fighters, in Indonesia and elsewhere!

The attacks on Gaza that occured only several months later demonstrate again the ease with which the Israeli state kills and mistreats Palestinians. Jews 4 Decolonization, consisting of Israelis fighting Israeli Apartheid, organizes actions to stop the Israeli agression.

Jews 4 Decolonization takes action for an equal en just society.  They organise disruptive actions, let themelves be arrested and then boycott court proceedings, to show how the Israeli apartheid legal system works: as Jewish Israelis, they risk less punishment than their Palestinian companions.

With their actions, they call upon the international community to immediately intervene in defence of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and throughout historic Palestine. As such, they join the Palestinian movement for liberation, including the campaigns for Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) and for the Palestian Right of Return.

In May 2022, Het Actiefonds supported an action during the courtcase against Amal Nakhleh, an 18 year old Palestinian political captive, risking years in prison.

Het Actiefonds supports all actions for the release of all Palestinian political captives and against the Israeli apartheid legal system.

Sexist Nationality Law

Since 1925, Lebanon’s nationality law has remained unchanged. The law stipulates that non-Lebanese women who marry Lebanese men may apply for Lebanese nationality, but non-Lebanese men who marry Lebanese women may not. This goes against the seventh article of the Lebanese constitution, which states that all Lebanese are equal before the law.

Masir, a Lebanese organization dedicated to individual human rights, believes that this sexist legislation must be changed. It is not alone: several political parties have already introduced bills to give women the right to naturalize their husbands. However, the president of the parliament has thus far refused to deal with these bills. Masir, with the support of Het Actiefonds, is therefore organizing a demonstration to put pressure on the speaker of parlement to discuss the bills.

Refugee crisis

Lebanon faces the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. 1 in 5 residents in Lebanon is a refugee, mainly Syrians and Palestinians. In addition, the country is suffering from a huge economic and political crisis ever since the port of Beirut exploded in August 2020. The economic consequences of this crisis hit refugees even harder, since they do not possess citizenship, receive little or no assistance from the state, nor do they have any prospect of naturalization.

The severe refugee policy of Lebanon springs forth from Lebanon’s confessional form of government, in which Christians, Sunni’s and Shi’ites are represented in the government based on their share in the total population. A sudden influx of Sunni refugees could tip the political balance in favor of Lebanese Sunnis, which the other confessional groups will not accept. Previously, the Palestinian refugee crisis in the aftermath of the Six-Day War (1967) similarly led to the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), which killed an estimated 120 thousand people.

Beirut is thus reluctant to naturalize refugees and makes this process as difficult as possible. An offshoot of this severe refugee policy is the government’s insistence on a clearly sexist law that goes against the constitution. In recent years there have been many mass protests in Lebanon for many different reasons, but a recurring motive has always been the end of confessionalism. This colonial relic developed under the French protectorate was part of a colonial “divide and rule” strategy. The consequences of this constitution have led to countless deaths and maintains a system of inequality to this day – especially regarding Syrian and Palestinian refugees. These refugees will remain stateless until they can return to their homeland.

Image: Nadim Kobeissi via Flickr.

When in 2020 the Covid crisis reached Prague, the city provided housing for about 150 homeless people in humanitarian hostels, which proved to be a well working program. It helped the people involved stabilise their situation, and some of them even found permanent housing outside of the program. At the end of June 2022, the crisis shelter was coming to an end. The city council was planning on providing other housing solutions for some of the participants, but 60 of them would find themselves on the streets again, after two years of a safe place to come home to.

Jezevci, a small grassroots action group in Prague, joined by local social workers, organised a campaign and an action to prevent this from happening. Every day, they went to the Town Hall to count down the number of days in which the people concerned would be literally thrown out on the streets, they organised an evening and night demo on the square in front of the Town Hall, where people slept in tents to show the precarity of homeless people to the City Councillors and their story got covered by different media.

Climax and succes

The climax of their campaign was an occupation of the Town Hall. Around 25 people entered the Town Hall to spend the night on army couches, and they refused to leave before the Council would properly consider the possible solutions for the 60 people concerned, and not long after, the Council came up with a solution for the coming two years. None of the former homeless people participating in the current program will be left on the street any time soon!

Het Actiefonds is proud to have been able to provide materials for this verry succesful action. The Jezevci collectif will continue to organise direct actions for all kinds of topics, and surely living rights will be one of them.

More pictures on the Actiefonds socials.

The province of Caquetá in Colombia stuggles with armed conflict between the national army and various armed groups such as the FARC. As a result, life for LGBTQI+ individuals takes on a particularly tough character. According to a report by Caribe Afirmativo, these people experience threats, forced displacement, sexual violence, torture, forced labor, personal injury, femicide and manslaughter. Their lives are constantly rendered invisible by the conflict in the province, but that does not mean they do not exist.

The authorities themselves know this all too well. On June 28, for example, several people with a sex or gender orientation that falls outside the norm were sentenced to excessively high penalties in Florencia. Afterwards it turned out that these people were not even allowed to consult a lawyer, contrary Colombian law which states that everyone has the right to consult a lawyer.

That’s why the collective Mariposario Amazonico, in collaboration with the art collective Caldera Gráfica Crew which we also support, is currently organizing a series of actions to draw attention to the rights of LGBTQI+. For example, consider a march through the main streets of Florencia to which all people who recognize themselves as queer, LGBTQI or with different sexual orientations and gender identities and sex workers, the majority of whom are trans women, are invited. These streets are often the least safe for them, so they will use this moment to put up posters denouncing cases of discrimination in Caquetá. But also posters exposing transphobia in government agencies and lack of thorough sex education.

Mariposario Amazonico is already leading by example in terms of education: they are offering several workshops on lesbian erotica, physical and emotional care in non-monogamous relationships, and much more.

This group  want streets to be named after the victims of the Hanau attack, as demanded by the Intiative 19 February. Up until today, many streets in Berlin and other German cities are named after colonial criminals. It is exactly these streets they rename at night, making them public symbols of remembrance for the victims of Hanau and more generally, the many other victims of right-wing and racist violence. By doing so, they want to raise awareness around the failure of the security authorities to protect people of color, and confront the normalization of racism in German society. Their goal is justice for the victims, and an end to racism. By changing the public understanding of racism and holding authorities accountable, they hope to make it more difficult for racist extremists to commit their violent acts. 

By ‘saying there names’, this small group wants to make the demands of the February 19 Initivative visible in the Berlin cityscape, and Het Actiefonds is proud to help them combat racism and make sure the names of the victims will never be forgotten. 

More info here.