Gender Alert in Gaza

Translated by Irene Cecchi

Last January 19th, Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, declared: “we have seen evidenced once more that women and children are the first victims of conflict and that our duty to seek peace is a duty to them”. Since the beginning of the conflict on October 7th, about 24.620 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, 70% among them were women and children. According to a UN Women estimate, it’s most likely that the number of women killed by Israeli’s forces is around nine thousand, 3000 are the ones that are now widowed and 10.000 children are left without a father, a condition that arouses the fear of early marriages.

In the tragedy of the conflict, women and children are once again less favoured than men, especially when it comes to food resources and services. The lack of an income that affected about 78% of the workers in the Gaza Strip makes the search for food even harder. According to a UN Women report carried out last February on a sample of 120 women, 84% of families are now eating half or less of what they used to do before the outbreak of the conflict. In this case, the first ones to deprive themself of food are women who prefer to give the little they have to their children. The risk of a famine is getting more and more actual because of the insufficient humanitarian aid and the ongoing hostility that interferes with everyday life. Also the shortage of clean water is an equally alarming problem for women and girls, especially during their period when they need even more of it to manage the situation with dignity.

The problem of the shortage of food and water is strictly related to another issue: pregnancy. According to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, about 5500 women in the next few months won’t give birth in a safe place. The situation for mothers in Gaza was already tough before the beginning of the war since doctors had too many women to assist and they couldn’t do it properly. Both during pregnancy and breastfeeding, the risk of malnutrition can cause serious consequences for the mother and the baby. Because of the current conflict, women don’t have access to emergency midwifery services that allow a safe delivery: they are obliged to give birth at home, in refugee camps or outside, where sanitary conditions are dreadful and the risk of infections and complications rises – deaths in childbirth can exponentially increase when women can’t benefit from proper care. The life of newborns is equally in danger: if hospitals are left without fuel, premature babies who need intensive medical care may risk their life. In case mothers and babies manage to survive the war, it keeps being part of their life. In fact, according to some research carried out in Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia – where armed conflicts are the usual – women are more exposed to miscarriages, congenital anomalies, stillbirth and deaths in childbirth, caused mainly by haemorrhages, thromboembolic diseases and obstructed labour.

In a statement of January 16th, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women faced the problem, deploring the fact that women are among the first victims of the violence related to conflicts. In addition, the Committee “the continuing war and siege cause grievous harm to all women and girls, including pregnant women and women with disabilities. This constitutes a major humanitarian, human rights and public health crisis and a stain on our collective conscience”. Since October, women have been victim of sexual abuse and gender violence; women and girls are deprived of all kind of safety, of drugs and of medical care, including a safe shelter. Hospitals, even though they should be protected by international humanitarian law, have been attacked repeatedly by Israeli’s forces. According to UN Women, in Gaza there are now only two shelters for women and they are both closed. It is now almost impossible to give birth in a safe and sanitary environment without ambulances and adequate medical aid. Every day, 37 mothers die, that is two every hour. Behind these numbers there are actual people, there are mothers, daughters, sisters and friends, there are human beings who are seeking the freedom of not having to fight every day for their life and the life of their children.

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