Last week Jenny Derbyshire from Enniskerry travelled to Palestine to work as a human rights monitor for three months.
She will live in a Palestinian town in the West Bank and her work will include duties such as monitoring checkpoints in the separation barrier, where Palestinian men, women and children have to queue for hours in order to go about their daily lives, including going to school, working in their fields or attending hospital.
Jenny will report any violations of human rights to the UN and other international bodies. She may also be asked to report on the demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli authorities, monitor deliberate pollution of Palestinian water supplies or offer protection to children under arrest.
Jenny recently retired after many years working in adult literacy and community education. In the early 1990s she was co-ordinator of the VTOS programme run by Bray VEC.
Following this she was a fulltime literacy teacher in Shanganagh Castle Detention Centre in Shankill, Co Dublin and when this centre closed she was seconded to work with the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA).
She travels out on November 21 and In Palestine Jenny will be working as part of an international group with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine- Israel (EAPPI). This is a World Council of Churches programme which is organised in Ireland and the UK by Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW).
As well as providing protection, the programme offers international support for Palestinian and Israeli peace groups. A further aim is to develop understanding of the situation in Palestine in order to build a just peace, based on international law.
Jenny is especially aware that she will be living in the occupied Palestinian Territories over Christmas and is particularly concerned to discover what the Christmas period will be like for the Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, who live in the Holy Land. ‘ When we sing the Christmas carols, I wonder if we realise what is happening in the places we sing about,’ she said.