{tab About Us}
The Clinic for Human Rights in Society was established in 2002 with the aim of utilizing law in order to promote human rights, and especially issues concerning poverty and social exclusion. The Clinic engages in legal action in a variety of fields such as debtor-creditor law, social security, housing, and others. It also handles cases of discrimination on the basis of nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. The Clinic is committed to empowering marginalized groups and the promotion of their rights, and especially to groups and individuals from northern Israel, which the University of Haifa is uniquely positioned to address.
The Clinic utilizes various legal strategies to promote its goals, such as individual legal aid, litigation, promoting policy change, and empowerment of individuals through education and information.
Contact Us:
{tab Projects}
Housing and planning rights
The Clinic completed the third year of the housing rights project in Haifa, a project that is supported also by a European Union grant. The project is operated jointly by the Clinic and two partner organizations, the Society for Distributive Justice (SDJ) and the Organization for Social Development in Haifa (OSDH), that are well embedded in the local community and are in charge of the community organizing. The first year of the project was dedicated to organizing and training the local activists, and mapping the challenges and interests of the local population. In the second year the Clinic, together with teams of activists, began actual legal and public work including applications according to the freedom of information act; letters to the town of Haifa and government agencies. In the past year, the projects have progressed as answers are being received, and legal actions taken to promote the goals of the project.
Individual Legal Aid
As a part of the project, the Clinic offers legal aid for individuals from the neighborhoods included in the project concerning issues of housing, planning, eviction, public housing, protected tenancy, etc. This year the Clinic provided individual legal aid to 9 residents.
From these 9 cases, two developed into court cases in which the Clinic is representing the residents. Both cases concern eviction orders from public housing. In both cases the Clinic submitted statements of defense and injunctions to postpone the evictions. The cases are pending.
Planning project
In addition to offering legal and representing individual cases, the housing project aims to promote planning and housing rights in the Arab neighborhoods. In order to promote the interests, needs and preferences of the local community, as well as to empower the community and to enable them to participate in decision making, the Clinic together with the partnering organizations have invested great efforts in creating and maintaining a group of community activists, educating them and offering them professional and social support in promoting their own goals. In the first stages of the project the activists defined their goals in terms of improving housing, planning and infrastructure in their neighborhoods. At this stage, after three years, these goals are slowly materializing:
Hiwar school
Hiwar school, located in Wadi Nisnas, is a State Elementary School that focuses on Arts. It suffers from severe lack of space, facilities and basic infrastructure, meaning that it can’t provide even the most basic of educational services let alone the full range of possibilities that an arts school should provide. Eight years ago, the parents, together with Mossawa organization, filed a legal petition in order to rectify these serious deficiencies. At the time, the city promised to make the necessary changes so the petition was withdrawn. However, the city reneged on their promise, and the situation has not improved in the years since. Improving the conditions in Hiwar was set as an important goal by the activists in the project. In July 2017, the Clinic sent a letter to the Haifa Municipality, the Ministry of Education and the Municipal Comptroller outlining their demands. Following the letter and some media attention, a meeting was held in which the municipality took full responsibility for all of the school’s deficiencies, however no concrete commitments were made. The Clinic prepared a petition to the administrative court, however just before the petition was filed the city decided to perform significant improvements in the school’s conditions, including renovating a building adjacent to the school thus enlarging the school’s space according to our demands. The Clinic will continue following the work to ensure adequate conditions at Hiwar school.
Another educational issue of concern involves Haifa’s municipal funding for Arab schools. The Clinic submitted a Freedom of Information Petition seeking to understand how Haifa allocates budgets for Arab schools. Specifically, the petition required information concerning the relative proportion of municipal budgets invested in Arab schools over the last decade and the way in which monies are allocated between Arab and Jewish schools. This request will prepare the groundwork for a possible legal petition on this issue.
Absentees’ Properties Tenders
The Clinic filed a Freedom of Information Petition concerning empty properties in Haifa. In reply the Clinic received detailed information concerning properties in Haifa, and learned that the Absentees’ Properties in Haifa are undergoing a process of public tenders that will lead to significant changes in their status in the near future. In order to plan how (and whether) to act in reaction to these changes, the Clinic organized a closed roundtable for NGOs and partners. The roundtable took place on 28.5.2018 and aimed to explore different legal strategies to react to the recent developments and to ensure that these properties are not taken from the Arab-Palestinian community. As a basis for discussion the Clinic wrote a paper surveying the legal and factual situation concerning absentees’ properties. The participants in the roundtable were lawyers, planners, sociologists and activists, alongside the Clinic’s staff and students.
Transportation
The team working on public transportation has made progress in its work with the Ministry of Transportation and the town of Haifa, and there has been improvement in public transportation to Abas and Wadi Nisnas neighborhoods and especially surrounding the schools.
Translation into Arabic of Tenders Issued by Amidar
Following a previous freedom of information application to Amidar (public housing agency), the Clinic learned that Amidar are publishing numerous tenders for selling public housing, a vast majority of which are located in Arab neighborhoods. Israeli law mandates that tenders be published in both Hebrew and Arabic on their official website, as well as in both Hebrew and Arabic language newspapers. Linguistic accessibility is particularly important because presenting these tenders to the Arab public could somewhat alleviate housing shortages faced by Haifa’s Arab residents. Despite the legal requirement, we found that the tenders were published in Hebrew only on Amidar’s website, thus discriminating against the Arab population. The Clinic prepared a policy paper stressing the importance of linguistic accessibility and the legal duty to publish the tenders in Arabic. In addition a letter was sent to Amidar requiring the publication of tenders in Arabic alongside the Hebrew. We also demanded that deadlines for pending tenders would be postponed so that Arab applicants would have sufficient opportunity to apply. As a result of these actions Amidar has begun complying with the law and advertising the tenders in Arabic. The Clinic continues to monitor Amidar’s practices.
Housing in Acre
In past years the Clinic was involved in a three year housing rights project in Acre (similar to the housing project in Haifa). The Clinic has remained in close contact with the community and grassroots organizations in Acre, and this year the Clinic undertook the following activities
Evacuation Orders in Han Al-Shuni
During the Spring Semester, the Clinic gave legal aid to 20 tenants that received collective evacuation orders in the area of Han Al-Shuni in Old Acre. The Clinic sent Amidar letters stressing that the evacuation orders were illegal and had procedural flaws. Following these letters Amidar withdrew the evacuation orders.
Lecture concerning Housing Rights
In June, the Clinic held a lecture concerning the rights and obligations of tenants in public housing.
Han El-Omdan
The Ministry of Tourism and the Society for the Development of Old-Acre published a tender for the lease of the area in order to transform it into a tourist and commercial area. The Clinic is examining the tender in order to ascertain whether it sufficiently includes the local residents (and especially the protected tenants) in the development process to ensure that their interests and rights are taken into consideration. The Clinic will also examine whether the residents will be able to participate in future commercial activity in Han El-Omdan.
Civic Burial
In March 2017 the Clinic filed a petition requiring the town of Hod-Hasharon to allocate land for civic burial. In the case, the town of Hod-Hasharon allocated land only for Jewish orthodox burial. After the Clinic approached the town, the allocation was changed and some land was allocated for civic burial however the allocation was insufficient and was not done according to the legal requirements. The court gave an interim order to prevent the allocation and commented that the allocation contradicted the law. Following this decision, the Clinic negotiated with the town, and eventually the town accepted most of the clinic’s demands, and the petition was withdrawn.
Promoting Policy and Legislative change
Participation in planning: The clinic approached the municipality of Haifa to ensure that Arab residents are given information regarding planning and can participate and ensure their rights in planning.
The Clinic filed two requests according to the Freedom of Information Act. The first, requiring information concerning the budgets allocated to planning and housing in Haifa. The second was directed both to the city of Haifa and the Ministry of Housing and Construction requiring information concerning a number of issues crucial for ensuring housing rights in the Arab neighborhoods in Haifa: Number of vacant public houses; planning for further public housing; shares of public housing sold to residents; information concerning protected tenants; information concerning absentee landlord properties in Haifa; and marketing houses belonging to the development agency. The information that will be learned will be used to engage in further legal action – writing letters to decision makers, policy papers, drafting legislation or legal petitions.
Limiting cost of renovations in public housing (continued from the previous year): in 2016 the Clinic dealt with the special case of renovating houses in old Acre due to the requirements of the Antiquities Law. Following the Clinic’s intervention, tenants that were unable to afford renovations have their debts forgiven and no longer face the threat of eviction. This year the Clinic drafted a bill aimed at limiting the sums that tenants of public housing in general are charged for renovating their homes.
Rights of People with Disabilities
Accessibility to Courts
During the year the students performed a survey of accessibility to courts in Haifa and the area. The survey examined both physical access and access to service. Following the survey, and in order to complete the picture, the Clinic filed two Freedom of Information petitions, one concerning the courts in Haifa and the other concerning the courts in the Krayot. The findings of the survey and freedom of information petitions were that generally speaking, the Courts in Haifa were accessible according to the regulations, whereas the court in the Krayot had several deficiencies. The Clinic wrote to the court’s management stating these deficiencies and requiring their speedy amendment.
Pension Cuts for People with Disabilities Who Work
The Clinic is representing an individual whose disability pension was cut as a result of him getting paid for work. Specifically, the cut was especially large because the workplace was far from home and he received significant travel reimbursement. In addition to representing the individual case the Clinic is working on policy change or legislative change in order to address this general issue.
