Date: Friday, November 10, 2017<\/p>\n
Jana Mustafa is a former employee of an international NGO and a survivor of violence. She lost her job due to an abusive marriage and experienced years of physical and psychological violence. She got a divorce with the legal help of the Hayat Centre in the Gaza Strip. The Centre is supported by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Women programme, \u201cA Holistic Approach to Sheltering Services for Women Victims and Survivors\u201d, funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS). As she hopes to begin a new life, Mustafa wants to open a small business to support her six-year-old son Jamal and prove that her disability is not an issue.<\/p>\n
Quote<\/strong><\/p>\n I lost my left leg when I was one-and-a-half years old. It was from a faulty vaccination that my cousin and I received. My cousin died on that day.<\/p>\n I was never ashamed of having a disability. I was always confident and dressed well. I also had a job at a local NGO that provided me with vocational training. People often wondered how I got such job with a disability. I did not care what people thought of me.<\/p>\n I met my former husband through a friend about 10 years ago. I became his second wife and lived in a separate house from his first wife. But soon, he started bringing other women into my house and beat me whenever I tried to stop him. He also threatened me not to tell his first wife about the other women.<\/p>\n When my family learned about his behaviour, they asked me to divorce him. I didn\u2019t know what to do… As my family kept coming to my workplace, I started missing work to avoid them, and soon got fired. I requested to talk to the director of my organization about my situation, . but my request was ignored.<\/p>\n I held on to the marriage because of my son, but the abuse didn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n My former husband did not support me financially; but he used my disability to make me feel weak. Finally, I decided to get a divorce and consulted an organization supporting disabled women. They referred me to the Hayat Centre, where I got psychosocial support and free legal aid. The lawyers at Hayat were really helpful. When I received the paper saying that the divorce is approved, I cried like a baby; I was so relieved. I used to be shy, but now I am a different person, thanks to the psychosocial help I received from Hayat. I speak out whenever I see injustice.<\/p>\n However, my economic situation is very difficult as I have been unemployed for a long time. Me and my six-year-old son Jamal live on a government subsidy of $60 per month. I have applied for many different jobs, but they all saw my disability and did not give me a chance. I am talented in handcraft and hair styling. I want to open a small business where I do not have to be judged by employers who do not know what I can offer. Disability shouldn\u2019t stop anyone from starting over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Date: Friday, November 10, 2017 Jana Mustafa is a former employee of an international NGO and a survivor of violence. She lost her job due to an abusive marriage and experienced years of physical and psychological violence. She got a divorce with the legal help of the Hayat Centre in the Gaza Strip. The Centre […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[2453],"document-source":[2481],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1841],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-123397","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-article","document-source-un-women","document-subject-women","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/123397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/123397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=123397"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=123397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}