About this event
The Centre for Global Education and Comhlámh invite participation in an online meeting to discuss how development educators can respond to the war on Gaza. Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in an attack on southern Israel, Israel has imposed a total siege on Gaza, including water, food, fuel, and medicines, and launched a genocidal attack on civilians and infrastructure. According to the UN, more than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed, 61,000 injured and 1.9 million are displaced. The UN estimates 2.2 million Palestinians to be at imminent risk of famine, with hundreds of thousands subjected to life threatening diseases and infections. Civilian infrastructure, including vital life-giving services, have been decimated and many families are sheltering in tents having lost their homes.
Development education involves firmly siding with the oppressed and challenging the root causes of oppression. This spirit has been very present in the enormous public protests across the island of Ireland over the past three months in solidarity with Palestinians. How might we, as a sector, be led by this groundswell of public solidarity and raise our collective voice on behalf of Palestine?
We know we have powerful GCE pedagogical tools that help with the confronting of injustice and hatred and build up strength, vision, and courage to mobilise people for action. How can we use these to get behind the calls for ceasefire, actions at the ICJ, and to harness our resources to back public engagement at home and push for stronger action from government? Our commitment to justice and solidarity calls our sector to consider how we can be visibly part of the 71% of people in Ireland who agree that Palestinian people live under a system of apartheid implemented against them by Israel (Source: Ireland Thinks survey).
If you would like to part of this line of conversation and see what more we can be doing as a sector, please join us on Wednesday, 31 January from 12.00-1.00pm. Please register at: Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-war-on-gaza-how-should-we-respond-as-dev...)
This event has been organised as part of a development education project funded by Irish Aid at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Irish Aid is the Government’s overseas development programme which supports partners working in some of the world’s poorest countries. Irish Aid also supports global citizenship and development education in Ireland to encourage learning and public engagement with global issues. The ideas, opinions and comments herein are entirely the responsibility of the Centre for Global Education and do not necessarily represent or reflect DFA policy.
January 2024