AID WATCH is a platform for monitoring and following up on international aid provided to the Palestinian institutions. Aid Watch is tasked to critically raise fundamental issues related to the mechanisms, forms, and objectives of international aid to Palestine. The ostensible goal is to adopt a critical discourse centered around holding international grants ACCOUNTABLE to the general Palestinian public to ensure that any external aid and support does not undermine, and is consistent with, the priorities set by the national agendas of the Palestinian people within the overall path of emancipation from colonial occupation.
The The Owneh Initiative seeks to work to ensure that international funding does not hinder the path of liberation work in Palestine. The Aid Watch initiative, which was dormant for some years, was revived after the events of October 7, 2023 following the indefensible positions and decisions adopted by many donors regarding the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip. Many international donors announced either the suspension or freezing of aid earmarked to many Palestinian institutions across different sectors. This was done under the pretext of reviewing and auditing the grants to ensure that these funds were being spent “in an appropriate and acceptable manner away from any ties with ‘terrorism.’” Many donors have since expressed their intent to tighten control procedures and conditions on grants provided to Palestinians. These actions are motivated purely by vindictive political considerations, lacking administrative or legal justifications.
This important international aid monitoring initiative was relaunched to unify the Palestinian voice rejecting the arbitrary measures carried out by these donors and the agendas they seek to impose. The Initiative was bolstered by the firm refusal of many Palestinian institutions to accept any form of conditional funding and their declared goal to strengthen the collective Palestinian position in the face of these conditions.
The OWNEH SOLIDARITY FUND mobilizes financial support to a number of Palestinian institutions whose vision is consistent with the Initiative and whose funding was cut off or frozen after the events of October 7, 2023. The fund seeks also to support principled local institutions that returned grants given by donors who adopted hostile and unprincipled stances regarding the struggles of our Palestinian people.
The Owneh SOLIDARITY FUND will launch campaigns to mobilize needed resources to be dispersed to like-minded Palestinian institutions on a collective and solidarity basis. The goal is to do away with dependence on conditional aid granted by international donors who have, in one way or another, aligned themselves with the oppressive colonial funding system following the war of extermination and genocide in Gaza.
The RESOURCES BASKET contributes to developing and nurturing a Palestinian civil society space liberated from the near-absolute dependence on politically conditioned external funding and other interferences that undermine Palestinian freedom.
The Resources Basket is guided by tested participatory methodology that mobilizes all locally available human, in-kind, material, knowledge, and other resources so they are accessible to and at the disposal of Palestinian cultural, research, and development institutions as well as intellectuals, artists, activists, and other community members. The intent also is to reduce wasteful duplication of precious resources, and to re-forge, in form and content, the relationship existing between core civil society institutions so they can better serve Palestinian collective liberatory efforts and discard narrow, self-serving interests of institutions and/or individuals.
The Basket actively seeks to reduce the costly administrative and overhead expenditures burdening civil society by promoting the practice of cost-sharing and matching available resources. The Basket aims to overcome the challenge of tapping and pooling the available human resources and expertise while at the same time avoiding, to the extent possible, unfair results such an initiative might have on its livelihoods.