Menstrual Health and inequalities: a critical panorama in poor contexts and humanitarian crisis

Translated by Alessandra Fumagalli 

According to United Nations Population Fund (UNPF), there are 1,8 billion menstruate people worldwide. However, according to the World Bank about 500 million women and girls struggle to access menstrual products or safe, private and hygienic spaces in which to use them. This is known as period poverty.

This issue is different all around the world: in some parts of the world, like in Senegal or in Kenya, menstruation is still a cultural taboo, that obliges girls to leave school, in order to avoid stigma and social exclusion or, sometimes, they are even obliged to prematurely marry, because, when menstruation occurs, they are considered adults. Moreover, in Kenya girls have to prostitute themselves in order to buy pads and this brought to a rise in HIV positive and adolescent pregnancy. In some other countries, like Nepal, some traditions, still practiced even if illegal, like Chhaupadi, obliged women to grow up with a sense of fear and shame, because a girl, while menstruating, is thought to bring bad luck. In India, 12% of 355 million menstruate women can’t afford menstrual products. To conclude, also in Italy, according to a survey carried out by We World, Equonomics and La Sapienza University, 1 woman out of 6 has the same problem.

Menstruation, in a global and patriarchal society, are seen as women’s mobility security and personal choices limitation.

These challenges are even more serious in humanitarian crisis. Firstly, in this case, menstruation can be an obstacle to quick escape and effective mental and physical resistance in front of conflicts or natural disasters. In some countries, like Myanmar, Congo, Sudan and Ukraine is it quite impossible to have menstrual products, water and clean clothes and, for this reason, each woman risks infections, illness, psychological traumas and stress.

Strategies of humanitarian policies often neglects menstruation issues. This can be seen also in provisional stays, staffed with male staff, where there is lack of toilet paper, soap, pads. Moreover, there is also a lack of water and hygienic-health infrastructures and, mostly, there isn’t a division between male and female. This leads to a lack of privacy, and they are exposed to some risks, like violation and sexual assaults.

In Rafah, Palestine, according to James Elder, spokesman of UNIFEC, in shelters managed by UNRWA is impossible to have clean pads and over 850 people share a single toilet, and 3,600 people share a shower. Usually, as for the global health standards, a toilet should be shared by 20 people. Women are looking for alternatives, in order to face with these lacks, building small toilets without water, but able to guarantee some privacy, using piece of mattress, shirts. Lots of them, above all adolescents, take pills in order to delay their period, but they risk nausea, dizziness, infertility and bleeding.

These situations lead us to think to a new solution to face the period poverty. Guaranteeing a well management of menstruation is not only an hygienic and health issue, but it also deals with dignity and human rights, because any women should be obliged to choose among human rights and survival.

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