Who will listen to the women of Gaza?

Gaza has been subjected to violent occupation with frequent escalations into acute conflict over the past two decades. Before 7 October 2023, 80% of the population had been dependent upon humanitarian assistance. Women-led organisations (WLOs) such as the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) in northern Gaza, have played a vital role in providing essential services and humanitarian assistance. Working to address the specific challenges faced by women in Gaza, WLOs have been key contributors to humanitarian response in Gaza for several decades and also play a crucial role in advancing women’s rights, resilience and empowerment. The existence of WLOs has time and again enabled women to mobilise to respond to the needs of their communities during conflict, providing assistance to people who are displaced. Since 1992, WATC has provided humanitarian assistance to women and girls in northern Gaza, including access to essential services, psychosocial support, and protection from violence and exploitation. Like the multiple other WLOs providing humanitarian assistance, especially in the gender-based violence (GBV) sector, WATC is an integrated part of communities across northern Gaza and has been disastrously affected by the war.

The catastrophic effects of the ongoing violence

In November I moved south in Gaza, with my mother, husband and son, to my previous home, Rafah. The Rafah that I found upon arrival was in dire straits. It is now one of ‘the most densely populated places’ in the world, and ‘has an infrastructure intended for one sixth of its population’. An estimated nearly 1 million women and girls have been displaced since 7 October. Women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities, both as casualties and due to reduced access to health services, as reported by most United Nations (UN) agencies operating in the Gaza Strip. The Rafah crossing to Egypt is closed and over 800,000 people have been forced into the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah governorates. There is an ongoing severe shortage of sufficient water, food, medicine and other basic items and services despite the chronic needs of the 1.7 million displaced. There is an imminent risk of famine. Of all people facing famine or severe hunger globally, 80% are Palestinians in Gaza. Lack of clean water has led to an increase in people suffering from maladies such as hepatitis due to infected water and poor hygiene conditions. The available water supply is estimated by UNRWA to be less than one litre per capita per day.

The impact of the violence on women and girls cannot be underestimated. They are unable to bathe on even a weekly basis and are deprived of menstrual health management items. In some shelters, the wait to use one of the few toilet facilities can take up to 16 hours. The destruction of the market chain and commercial sector has created a huge gap in available supplies to meet the basic needs of women and girls. Furthermore and most disastrously, the physical and social pressures created by overcrowding are compounding GBV risks, and extreme overcrowding increases risks for intimate partner violence and gender-based violence.

Communities have been forcibly displaced due to Israeli evacuation orders without items necessary for survival, and as they move to seek safety and shelter, every new wave of displacement consolidates the ever-increasing concentration of displaced people. Further displacements eradicate the spontaneous networks that women establish to support their families while they attempt to cope with each round of upheaval. The scale of the conflict has a multidimensional impact on all people in Gaza, with very significant risks for women and girls. In a survey from March 2024, 51% of surveyed women have lost at least one family member and at least 3,000 women are estimated to be widowed. As the primary caretakers in most families, women face first-hand the long-term consequences of the devastating psychological impact of intergenerational trauma for entire families in Gaza, and the impact on their health and safety due to the lack of clean water and sanitation services, shelter, homes, hospitals and treatment.

Women and girl survivors of gender-based violence have very limited opportunities to access life-saving support services as there has been a total collapse in GBV referral pathways. The two women’s safe houses run by WLOs in Gaza have been destroyed due to bombardment. Child marriage has increased within shelters, and incidents of sexual violence continue to rise with no safe shelter available. GBV survivors who face an immediate threat of life by their abuser have nowhere to go.

WLOs working amid the chaos

Many WLO staff, volunteers and project participants were among those forcibly displaced from northern Gaza to Rafah in autumn 2023. Following the bombardment of Gaza City, I had to abandon my home to seek medical assistance for my mother, leaving behind the remains of the bombed WATC offices, the destroyed legacy of three decades of work. During previous crises, WATC research and documentation on issues affecting women in Gaza, including GBV and access to healthcare, have served as a basis for evidence-based advocacy and policy interventions related to humanitarian conditions for civilians in Gaza, but our work on monitoring and documentation during this war has taken second place to the urgent need for lifesaving interventions for women and girls.

Despite our attempts to continue working with Gazan women’s organisations to facilitate capacity-sharing and referral pathways during the first months of the war, and to support the active participation of women’s organisations in humanitarian decision-making processes, this has been nearly impossible due to the destruction of communication infrastructure. In addition, the lack of water and electricity supply, the mass destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure, and denial of access for humanitarian goods or staff make it impossible for us to deliver urgently needed aid to vulnerable communities in northern Gaza. New restrictions have compounded the impacts of a 17-year blockade that has severely limited imports of food, fuel and medicine.

While WLOs are trying their utmost to resume services, the destruction of safe houses and the very limited supplies into Gaza make this almost impossible. Due to displacement, WLOs and other GBV service providers continuously need to relocate and reestablish response locations. The collapse of the health system also means the loss of lifesaving GBV and sexual and reproductive health services, and the toppling of the civilian policing and judicial structures means there is nowhere to report cases. WATC continues to work to foster collaboration and networking among women’s organisations, civil society groups, international organisations, donor agencies, and human rights bodies, but our impact is limited due to the low levels of connectivity between displaced staff and casework. 

During near-constant emergency conditions, WLOs in Gaza have looked after the most vulnerable members of the community, caring for pregnant women and older people, offering counselling for trauma survivors, advocating for people with disabilities, and providing advice on women’s safety. While WLOs are doing their utmost to maintain programming, our buildings, vehicles and essential supplies have been destroyed. Bombardment, destruction and displacement have reduced WLOs to working out of makeshift accommodation with minimal electricity, restricting communications and making it challenging for WLOs to continue operations beyond monitoring conditions, psychosocial support, case management and connecting with old cases. Providing specialised programming is difficult due to the breakdown of referral pathways and the disruption of case management due to displacement.

WLOs in Gaza need urgent support

While in Rafah, I used local connections and long-term relationships with partners and networks in the areas of displacement to mobilise assistance for vulnerable households. What I was able to do was small in comparison to the pre-war work of my organisation, but in the face of severe need I did what I could. Women’s capacity, knowledge and networks are essential to helping Gazans cope, and WLOs have been a key enabling factor for women’s leadership in humanitarian action in Gaza for more than two decades, contributing immeasurably to resilience, empowerment, and social change despite the challenges posed by the ongoing conflict and occupation. During the frenzy of work to re-establish minimum programming and restore contact with caseloads, we continue to fear that vulnerable households will be displaced yet again in the face of full incursion into Rafah. More than 1 million people have been further displaced since the start of the Israeli ground operation in Rafah on 6 May 2024.

Today in Rafah, Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah, women play an important role in coordinating within crisis-affected communities, assessing needs, trying to build referral pathways between services, and providing basic support to vulnerable community members. With the collapse of Gaza’s ‘humanitarian system’ and forcible mass displacement of its population, decades of work by WLOs have been eroded and WLO leaders, staff and volunteers have had to abandon their work while fleeing for their lives. WLOs have witnessed specific risks first-hand: insufficient and unreliable aid, distributed under conditions of insecurity that do not allow adequate targeting, exposing vulnerable groups to violence, exploitation and abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, including by aid workers. The work of WLOs in Gaza has always included advocacy for policies and reforms that protect women’s rights in Gaza, to address the causes of violence against women and girls. In the present situation, that advocacy is aimed at international humanitarian decision-makers and donors to bring to light the scale of risk to women and girls in current humanitarian operations. We have been calling for the donor community to prioritise GBV as a lifesaving service and scale up resources for GBV prevention, response, and risk mitigation, including direct support to women-led organisations, and will continue to do so.

The exclusion of WLOs in leadership

While women in Gaza have been at the forefront of providing essential care and support to their communities, the depth and extent of women’s leadership have gone largely unrecognised and undervalued by humanitarian actors. Women in Gaza have faced systemic barriers that marginalise their contributions and limit their ability to shape humanitarian response. Within the international humanitarian response in Gaza, women’s contributions have been overlooked, undermined and undervalued, relegated to ‘feminine’ roles such as care-taking, further limiting women’s access to leadership. UN-led responses to acute and protracted crises in Gaza have perpetuated power imbalances and sidelined women from decision-making processes, undermining the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts and further entrenching gender inequality in humanitarian leadership. This exclusion has limited the effectiveness of response by failing to address the specific needs of women and vulnerable populations.

The exclusion of women from formal leadership and decision-making roles within humanitarian efforts has repeatedly been a theme of internationally coordinated response in Gaza, and the lack of inclusion of WLOs in the design and implementation of emergency response has resulted in less effective programming. International organisations have appointed men to manage operations and control resources, despite overwhelming evidence that humanitarian actors can better address the multifaceted needs of populations affected by crisis by embracing the collective expertise and resilience of women. Furthermore, international humanitarian actors have used patterns of leadership that reflect formal community structures, thus continuing to exclude women, instead of embracing the capacity and knowledge of WLOs. International donors have continued to fund these models of internationally led and male-dominated humanitarian action despite direct requests and public calls for support from women-led organisations.

Conclusion

There is no time to waste – WLOs in Gaza are working in incredibly difficult conditions. If WLOs are not heard, then women’s and girls’ urgent needs will remain largely overlooked. The international community must support our efforts to provide crucial, lifesaving GBV services. At the same time, space must be made in the humanitarian system to allow for women (including those in WLOs) to shape humanitarian responses, putting their expertise and capacities at the forefront and thereby giving women, girls and other vulnerable people in Gaza the aid and services that they need.

Nadia Al Bakri is the Director of Women’s Affairs Technical Committee, originally from Rafah, formerly living and working in Gaza City. She is currently in Cairo, receiving medical treatment.