As the new year begins, hopes that it will bring succor to the women and children of Gaza have been dashed. For the women, it has been a continuum of deprivation, degradation and despair. Various estimates suggest that at least 150,000 pregnant women have been left to their own devices with no medical care to ensure their health or that of their unborn children. They have little food, hardly any safe shelter, no drinking water or sanitation, and things are getting worse. Whatever food is available is hardly nutritious. UN figures say at least 38,000 adolescent girls and 8,000 pregnant women could be facing famine which means that when born, the babies will be low birth weight and the mothers will be at grave risk.
With people fleeing from the constant bombardment to shoddy shelters, women are in ever greater danger. The shelters have no security or essentials, and women and girls face not just the risk of injury/death from the blasts but also sexual violence and abuse. There has also been a marked rise in domestic violence against women in the relief camps, alongside a glaring lack of safe spaces for women survivors of gender-based violence.
Meenakshi Gopinath, director, Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), says, “The differential needs of women and children must be addressed through gender-responsive humanitarian aid and psychosocial support services catering to the specific requirements of women heads of households, pregnant women, women with disabilities, women with chronic ailments, orphaned children and child detainees.” Akashleena Chakrabarti, program officer, WISCOMP adds, “Despite the overwhelming challenges, the tireless efforts of grassroots women-led organizations and countless women serving as frontline responders — leading relief and care work amid looming despair — are rays of hope and courage.”
Despite the best efforts of aid agencies, aid in the form of reproductive health equipment, medicines for pregnant women, and childbirth and menstrual hygiene supplies are not reaching the affected. There are no sanitary napkins or life-saving drugs for women in most areas and, in the case of pregnant women, what little is available is rarely accessible. Lucy Nusseibeh, founder and executive chair of Middle East Non-violence and Democracy, says, “Courageous Palestinian women remain at the center of Gaza’s sufferings. Recent harsh winter storms have washed away anything between 10,000 and 100,000 of the makeshift tents that women have tried to make into ‘homes’ (the actual number is vast and unknowable in the chaos and devastation that is the Gaza Strip), leaving their places awash. with sewage and debris.” Some two million people are now displaced, with only a bare minimum of resources. With no tents, the last vestiges of privacy and a feeble semblance of security for women are gone. Also gone is the last protection for them and their families against the elements as Israel continues to prevent blankets, clothing, and shoes — including necessities for children — from entering the Gaza Strip.
Around 180 women give birth every day in these unimaginably appealing conditions. With almost all of Gaza’s hospitals unable to function, with increasing malnutrition and lack of medicines and medical care, along with dire stress, miscarriages and birth complications have increased exponentially.
It is a tribute to Gaza’s women and how they manage to maintain their dignity and humanity in the face of relentless violence. Women on the frontlines of peace work continue to raise their voices against the impunity of unbridled power and senseless violence, for which Gaza has become the metaphor today.
The views expressed are personal
