The Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights began as a primary unit in Birzeit University in 2016. This institute is the result of the combination of the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy – Muwatin (founded in 1991 in Ramallah) incorporation into the university, joining with the Master’s Program in Democracy and Human Rights (founded in the Faculty of Graduate Studies in 1999), along with several other activities related to this academic program, joining together all to form the current institute.

Muwatin strives to foster an interdisciplinary approach to research and teaching, thus constructing the space to apply these intellectual and practical tools towards understanding our lived realities.
Our students and researchers benefit from the opportunities that we provide to connect with other academic and research institutes, local civil society, national institutions as well as foreign visiting researchers.
The Institute insists in engaging with the community to serve as a platform for those interested in understanding and impacting our lives. Particular attention is given to hegemonic and regulatory structures that have been heavily prevailing over the lives of Palestinians living in the colonial condition.
Muwatin strives to provide the space for intellectual inquiries on fundamental issues that concern the Palestinian people as we work collectively towards deconstructing colonialism and hegemony and constructing our national liberation.

Muwatin Institute consists of several elements including teaching, research, continuing education, community outreach, and an information centre on democracy and human rights, which involves constant public engagement including regular publishing, archiving audio- visual materials on the institute’s website. The Institute is also a centre of on-going activities through the work of various other hosted initiatives including the Karamah Initiative and the Idea Factory.