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A mother and daughter find shelter inside a tent in a displacement camp in Gaza. In overcrowded conditions with no privacy, women and girls struggle to manage their menstruation. \u00a9Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA\/Media Clinic.<\/p><\/div>\n
The past 19 months have been deadly for women and girls in Gaza. Since October 2023, on average,\u00a0\u00a0one woman and one girl has been killed every hour\u00a0<\/a><\/em>in attacks by Israeli forces.\u00a0 People have been displaced multiple times, trapped in increasingly shrinking spaces, with no safety,\u00a0 and where the humanitarian crisis is becoming more desperate by the day.<\/p>\n Many families are sharing tents or sleeping in the open, or in the skeletal remains of buildings that could collapse at any moment. There is little food, no clean water, and extremely poor, if any sanitation.\u00a0\u00a0Makeshift toilets usually consist of a hole in the sand surrounded by sheets dangling from a line, and these must be shared with dozens of strangers.<\/p>\n For\u00a0women and girls, the war has brought an additional monthly horror.\u00a0Menstruation has become a nightmare for an estimated 700,000 women and girls in the absence of sanitary pads, water, toilets, or clean clothes, not to mention privacy.<\/p>\n An estimated 10.3 million sanitary pads are needed in Gaza every month, but three months into Israel\u2019s total aid blockade, hygiene and menstrual supplies are almost depleted. If they can be found, sanitary pads are around five times their pre-war cost, making them unaffordable for most families. No hygiene items have been included in the trickle of aid recently let into Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cI tore one of my only shirts into pieces so my daughters could use them as pads,\u201d said a father of four,\u00a0 displaced from Jabalia in northern Gaza.<\/p>\n Over the past 19 months, close to 90 per\u00a0 cent of water and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed leaving\u00a0nine in ten households facing severe water shortages<\/a><\/em>. Families are forced to make impossible choices between drinking, cooking, or washing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Women and girls walk around a destroyed displacement camp in Gaza. \u00a9 Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA\/Media Clinic.<\/p><\/div> In the absence of sanitary pads and clean water, women and girls are forced to improvise, using old clothes, torn fabric, or sponges.\u00a0But without water to wash, these materials cannot be reused safely, drastically increasing the risk of reproductive and urinary tract infections, and other skin and hygiene-related diseases. An estimated 170,000 women and girls are expected to suffer from these conditions, most without hope of treatment, potentially leading to long-term gynecological complications.<\/p>\n The nightmare isn’t just physical; the psychological toll is severe. For adolescent girls, the first period, a confusing time even in peace, becomes an unbearable ordeal.<\/p>\n \u201cMy period started while I was in a crowded shelter. I only had one pad, so I wrapped it with toilet paper to make it last,\u201d said a young girl from Gaza. \u201cI couldn\u2019t wash, and the pain was horrible. I sat in silence crying until the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n Some women and girls are even driven to skip meals or reduce how much they drink just to avoid having to use unsafe toilets.<\/p>\n The constant struggle to survive has stripped women and girls of their dignity. Menstruation, a natural part of life, has become a source of helplessness and distress. There is nowhere to dispose of used sanitary pads, adding to feelings of fear and shame.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve forgotten I\u2019m even a woman. I can\u2019t remember the last time I took care of myself or had a nice shower. My body doesn\u2019t feel like my own anymore,”\u00a0said a 37-year-old displaced woman.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A woman walks through a destroyed displacement camp in Khan Younis. \u00a9 Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA\/Media Clinic.<\/p><\/div> Since October 2023, more than 300,000 women and girls have received a two-months\u2019 supply of disposable sanitary pads.\u00a0Dignity kits, menstrual hygiene supplies, and cash assistance have reached over 150,000 women, enabling them to buy essential items like pads, soap, underwear, and towels.<\/p>\n “Food keeps us alive, but pads, soap, and privacy let us live with dignity,” said a\u00a042-year-old displaced woman in Khan Younis.\u00a0\u201cReceiving a hygiene kit feels like being seen.\u201d<\/p>\n Over 6,200 adolescent kits, containing hygiene items, educational materials, and protection tools, have also been distributed across Gaza.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A girl receives an adolescent kit containing hygiene items. \u00a9Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA\/SDF.<\/p><\/div> As needs remain enormous, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA and partners are ready to scale up and deliver assistance to those most in need based on humanitarian principles. Trucks carrying desperately needed supplies, including hygiene items, have been stalled at borders for weeks. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA once again calls for\u00a0an immediate ceasefire and the restoration of unhindered humanitarian access. Women and girls have suffered enough; they desperately need this nightmare to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 28 May 2025 The past 19 months have been deadly for women and girls in Gaza. Since October 2023, on average,\u00a0\u00a0one woman and one girl has been killed every hour\u00a0in attacks by Israeli forces.\u00a0 People have been displaced multiple times, trapped in increasingly shrinking spaces, with no safety,\u00a0 and where the humanitarian crisis […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[2337],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[2517,1769,1945,5358,2005,2533,1741,2349,1745,1841],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-308018","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-united-nations-population-fund-unfpa","document-subject-access-and-movement","document-subject-armed-conflict","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-ClosuresCurfewsBlockades","document-subject-gaza-strip","document-subject-health","document-subject-human-rights-and-international-humanitarian-law","document-subject-living-conditions","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","document-subject-women","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308020,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/308018\/revisions\/308020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=308018"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=308018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵFPA is responding\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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