Gaza Urban & Peri-Urban Agriculture Platform (GUPAP) enhances resilience, builds institutional capacity and supports collaboration amongst its eighty member Community Based Organisations; including advocacy and policy influencing campaigns and sharing of knowledge, success stories and experience at local, regional and global levels.
GAPUP’s work responds to the challenging urban protracted crisis context of the Gaza Strip; where economic opportunities are very limited and urban agriculture is not officially recognised by policy makers and planners.
GUPAP is an active member of at least 6 national, regional and global networks and working groups including representation of West Asia and the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty in the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) of the UN-CFS.
Over the years, GUPUP has:
- Facilitated five policies relating to local market-oriented urban and peri-urban agriculture development. This included an advocacy campaign to advocate rights of urban women agripreneurs. GUPAP succeeded in facilitating and consolidating a safe influencing and exchange space, the first of its kind in Palestine called Urban Women Agripreneurs Forum (UWAF);
- Promoted urban family farming and food sovereignty as strategies to enhance resilience of farming communities in protracted crisis conditions;
- Worked with governmental and non-governmental institutions to consider market oriented urban farming within the national strategies and function of the national institutions;
- Facilitated participation of value chain actors, including small scale women/men producers, to provide input into these strategies.
- GUPAP has recently become (June-July 2021) a member of the Coordination Committee of the Global Network for the Right to Food & Nutrition
