The Gaza Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Platform
The Gaza Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Platform- GUPAP, launched in 2013, consists of a multi-stakeholder, interactive and participatory forum that brings together all key actors involved in the development of a resilient Palestinian agricultural sector in the Gaza Strip. GUPAP is currently made up of about 80 members, including national and local government Institutions; Non-Governmental Civil Institutions; the Private Sector; Research and Educational Institutions; Agricultural Value Chain Platforms and Agricultural Micro-Finance Institutions.

Over the past years, GUPAP, by building institutional capacity and collaboration among GUPAP members this resulted in the design and adaptation of 5 policies relating to local market-oriented urban and peri-urban agriculture development, including MoNE assessment of protection of national products, dates and dairy products & investigation on tariffs for imported foreign dairy products and quota placement on imported powder milk, the activation of the Dates Sector Development Committee (Red Palm Weevil Cluster), an advocacy campaign on women agricultural rights, and the reactivation of the Consumer Protection Association and launching of a Buy-local campaign. Furthermore, GUPAP has worked with both governmental (including municipalities) and non-governmental institutions to internalise the concepts of market oriented urban farming within the strategies and function of the national institutions. It was successful to integrate this concept within the 2016-2018 strategy of MoNE. Similarly these concepts as well as the project’s participatory extension approaches have been integrated in the MoA strategy. GUPAP facilitated participation of value chain actors, including small scale producers and private sector, to provide input into these strategies.

From 2013-2017, GUPAP was hosted by Oxfam and PNGO; http://pngoportal.org/en/776.html . It was supported in its work by both Oxfam; https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/enhancing-market-orie…, as well as the RUAF Foundation-Global partnership on Sustainable Urban Agriculture and City Region Food Systems; http://www.ruaf.org/news/gupap-supports-national-policies-protect-natio… .

Launched at the first Global Conference on Women in Agriculture (GCWA, New Delhi, March 2012), GAP is a multi-stakeholder network for action, developed through the passion and commitment of individuals across many civil, private, governmental and inter-governmental institutions at global, regional, national and local levels, working together to promote gender equity and empower women in agriculture.