RIGHT TO RETURN

The Palestine International Center in Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp works to defend the Palestinian right of return by ensuring that return remains a living political, cultural and popular commitment. The Center brings together political education, cultural activity, sports, youth organizing and community initiatives that strengthen Palestinian identity and connect new generations with the struggle for return and liberation. Its work seeks to counter the marginalization and depoliticization of Palestinian refugees by creating spaces where refugees can organize, learn, produce culture and articulate their political demands.

For the Center, defending the right of return also means defending the ability of refugees to remain rooted, organized and politically active while they are in Lebanon. Poverty, discrimination, restrictions on employment and professional life, and pressures toward migration can weaken Palestinians and push refugees into further displacement; confronting these conditions is therefore connected to preserving right of return.

The Center has already brought Palestinian and Lebanese journalists together to challenge discriminatory restrictions on Palestinian media workers, while also organizing visits by international student delegations to the camps so that refugees can communicate their history, present conditions and demands directly to supporters from abroad. Through this combination of community organizing, defense of civil and social rights, international solidarity and the cultivation of Palestinian political and cultural identity, the Palestine International Center treats return as something to be prepared for and struggled for today.