Reports & Researches

Coercion of learning support program employees to resign Illegal action

The UNRWA administration sent a letter to the teachers of the learning support program asking them to sign the resignation due to the lack of funding for this program, provided that the contract ends on December 31, 2020, and to hand over the UNRWA card and health insurance card. Mentioning that the learning support program employees were paid full-time half salary.The number of students to whom the learning support service was provided is estimated at about 8,000 students, while the number of students to whom school health care was provided, due to the Corona epidemic, was about 30,000 students. Also, this program takes care of students with special needs such as the blind, deaf and dumb, and those who suffer from learning difficulties and are not accepted in the Lebanese institutions.

The Palestinian Association for Human Rights (Witness) considers that forcing employees to resign is illegal. This program renewed annually. The legal justification is not sufficient for taking such action. Also, the reasons that created this program are still strong.

(Witness) calls on the UNRWA administration in Lebanon to deal with its employees in good faith, transparency and clarity. It also calls on the UNRWA administration to search for funding sources for this project, and it is convinced in its importance and educational need.

Legal reasons for refusing this action:

First: The importance of contracts in our life:

A human being is a social being, who belongs to a specific environment, he cannot live alone, and the contract is a means to fulfill his needs and interests, both material and moral ..., which are sublime considerations that require respect and preservation. For this purpose, it is necessary for every person to deal with others in good faith, away from exploitation, fraud, deceit and coercion, and in return, the other must take care to protect his interests, and not enter into contracts until after checking the finer details. Moreover, when necessary, reviewing trusted specialists to determine the validity of the contracts to be concluded.

Second: The satisfaction is one of the most important pillars of the contract:

The satisfaction: that is, the consent of both parties to the contract. The most important pillar of the contract is the expression of the contracting will of the contracting parties.

According to the principle of the power of will, every person has the freedom to contract or not. Accordingly, entering into negotiations does not oblige the person to enter into a contract at the end of the negotiations, but rather he has the right to refuse the contract without fulfilling his responsibility in principle, and this principle also implies that the person has complete freedom. In choosing the person who contracts with him.

Third: Transparency, clarity, and good faith contradict a mistake:

A mistake is a psychological state that controls a person's mind and makes him assume the delusion of the validity of something that is in fact wrong, or the untrue of something that is actually true, meaning that his will is affected and he conceives of something that is not true.

The mistake that leads to the nullity of the contract is that which strikes the will upon concluding the contract and pushes the contracted to enter into a contract other than what he would have done if it did not fall into it.

Fourth: There is no compulsion to conclude or cancel contracts:

Coercion, whether material or moral, is every material or moral pressure that falls on the contracting party, which creates fear in himself that leads him to contract. For example, if a person signs a contract or revokes it after being seriously threatened with death in a manner that aroused fear in himself, then inducing him to sign in order to avoid the danger resulting from the threat. The legislator has stipulated that every conclusion or annulment of a contract that results from physical violence or a threat to the person of the debtor is subject to revocation, whether the coercion is issued by one of the contracting parties or by a third person or from conditions outside the contracting circle.

Without stipulating that in the last two cases the contracting party benefiting from the occurrence of the coercion is aware of the existence of this coercion and its effect on the will of the other contracting party, This is in contrast to what is the case with deception, as already mentioned.

The lesson in coercion is not the means used, but rather what those means send out of fear or dread in himself and affect his will and push him to contract,Who would not have wanted if he had been free-willed.

Beirut, 3/12/2020

Palestinian Association for Human Rights (witness)