“They lose their lives, They are sick, hungry, exhausted, and holding families together despite their constant fear and loss.“, said Maryse Guimond, speaking from Jerusalem to reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
Ms Guimond recently completed a week-long mission to Gaza. In the six years she has been in this role, she has visited the site more than 50 times, including after previous escalations.
She was not prepared for the “utter destruction and inhumanity” she saw this time.
War ’embedded’ in women’s faces and bodies
“What I saw exceeded my worst fears for the women and girls I have worked with for so many years,” she said.It was unbearable to witness the daily escalation of violence and destruction of a war against women with no end in sight..”
The UN Women The representative said she was thrown into a world of devastation and utter deprivation when the gate at the Kerem Shalom border crossing closed behind her.
“I can’t stress enough how much this war has impacted women and girls. I barely recognized women I knew before the war. The last nine months are on their faces, on their bodies.”
Death, displacement, deprivation
Ms Guimond explained that Gaza is a “war on women”, simply because of the numbers of dead and wounded and the overall level of devastation faced by women there.
“We’ve never seen this before,” she said.
More than 10,000 women have been killed since hostilities began on October 7, 2023, following Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel, which killed some 1,200 nationals and foreigners and took another 250 hostages.
Conditions in the enclave are dire. More than half a million women “are severely hungry, eating the last and the least of their families, skipping meals for months and not eating healthy foods“, she said, citing data from UN Women.
In addition, people “live in overcrowded spaces, where infectious diseases are much more prevalent.” Because there is no water, women are forced to shave their heads to avoid infections.
Pregnant women ‘afraid’
“I didn’t recognize the Gaza I knew,” said Ms. Guimond. “Houses, hospitals, shops, schools, universities have been destroyed. Groups of men, women, children trying to survive and in makeshift tents and overcrowded shelters, surrounded by rubble and total destruction.”
As most hospitals are no longer functioning, access to health care and medical treatment is limited.
Asked about the situation of pregnant women, Ms Guimond replied that “some of them are so afraid of giving birth in circumstances over which they have no control that we hear that some wonder if there is a way to give birth more quickly.”
‘No safe places’
Since January, UN Women has published several reports on the gender aspects of the Gaza conflict, to mark how it is “fundamentally a protection crisis for women.”
Gaza has a population of about two million people, 90 percent of whom are displaced, including nearly a million women and girls who have been displaced multiple times in an ever-shrinking area.
“There are no safe places to be as a woman in Gaza,” she said. “They move without money, without belongings and without any idea of how and where they are going to live. Many women told me that they will not move again because it will not make a difference to their safety or survival..”
But in the face of death, disease and displacement, women in Gaza are ‘showing remarkable strength and humanity in their struggle for survivalwith hope and solidarity amid the devastation,” she added.
The last UN Women’s Gender Alertwhich was published last month, examined how the war is going impact on 25 women-led organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories, 18 of which are stationed in Gaza.
They have over 1,500 staff who manage shelters, deliver hygiene kits, food parcels, psychosocial support and other essential services, despite a lack of funding.
These organizations need financial support to sustain their efforts, she said. But they also need to see increased representation of women at the decision-making table at every step of the humanitarian response — from planning to final delivery — and they need them now.”
Ms Guimond concluded her briefing by reiterating the UN’s long-standing call for peace in Gaza, full humanitarian access through the opening of all land crossings into the enclave, an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
