Press briefing by UN Women on the situation of women and girls in Gaza

 

17 October 2025

Remarks by UN Women Chief of Humanitarian Action Sofia Calltorp at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

[As delivered]

As UN Women, in Gaza and across the world, we are in daily contact with women and girls whose voices must be heard.  

And I would like to start today’s briefing with one of those voices. And I quote:  

“We hope the ceasefire lasts. We can’t say we’re fully at peace, but we hope they don’t go back on their words this time, we really can’t bear it anymore.” 

These are the words from a 22-year-old woman, a university student in Gaza. 

Her words echo what we have heard from so many women and girls across Gaza since the ceasefire began, it is a mix of fragile hope, deep exhaustion, and quiet strength. 

They see this ceasefire as a moment of hope – hard-won, fragile, and long overdue. 

And so do we – as UN Women, as humanitarians, as the international community that now must make this hope a  reality.

Over the past week, we’ve seen the first signs of progress.  

Some food, medicine, and water are now entering Gaza. For many women and girls, for the first time in months, they  can hope to seek care, receive aid, and sleep without the sound of airstrikes. 

But hope, as we know, on its own, is not enough. The ceasefire may have paused the fighting, but it has not ended the crisis. 

For two years, women and girls in Gaza were killed at a rate of roughly two every hour [1]. This number only defines the scale of this war, and it will haunt our collective conscience for generations. 

Today, the needs of women and girls in Gaza remain at an all-time high. 

Over one million women and girls require food aid, and nearly a quarter million need urgent nutrition support [2]. This ceasefire is our window to deliver, to deliver fast, to stop famine where it has begun and prevent it where it looms. 

Most women in Gaza have been displaced at least four times during the war [3]. The ceasefire is their first chance to stop running, to find safety, and to rebuild. But winter is coming, and too many still have no shelter. 

In Gaza today, one in seven families is now led by a woman [4]. They need aid that reaches them directly, so they can feed their children, access healthcare, rebuild livelihoods, and restore some stability after losing everything. 

These numbers are not just statistics.  

They are stark reminders that there will be no recovery without the women and girls who have kept Gaza alive through famine, fear, and flight.  

Women and girls must be the architects of Gaza’s recovery. 

In every crisis, women have shown that when they are given the means, they turn survival into recovery and despair into rebuilding. 

Gaza today is no exception. 

Every day during the war, women-led organizations, small businesses, health workers, teachers, have been working against impossible odds, holding families and communities together, while the world negotiated their future. 

At UN Women, for us today, our mission is clear: to ensure that this ceasefire translates into safety, recovery, and rights for women and girls, placing them at the center of every humanitarian and reconstruction effort. 

The task before us is immense. But this moment demands more than simply stopping a war. It demands that we start again, and that we start differently. 

UN Women is coordinating with UN and partners and others to ensure every clinic, and food parcel reaches women and girls safely, and meets their real needs.  

For more than a decade, we, as UN Women have been working in Gaza with women-led and women’s rights organizations. Many of them never stopped, even on the darkest days. They kept providing care, protection, and hope.  

Every woman who rebuilds a bakery, a clinic, or a classroom, is rebuilding peace. Every dollar invested in women-led aid, is a down payment on hope. The data is very clear on this: when we invest in women, every $1 generates an $8 return for whole communities [5]

Because it’s not just about getting aid in and who it reaches, it is also about how we deliver it. If we do not put the humanitarian needs of women and girls at the center, and if we do not include women’s organizations in the response, in recovery, and in the work of rebuilding, then women will be excluded from the future of Gaza altogether. 

At UN Women, we are now working side-by-side with the UN system which is on the ground fully mobilized to scale-up life-saving assistance.  

All parties must uphold the ceasefire agreement, fully and without delay. 

Member States must step up funding now.  

If we are true about hope, we must act on it. If we are true about peace, we must restore it through women. 

And if we are true about our shared humanity, we must do it now, not when the headlines fade, but while hope still flickers in the eyes of women and girls in Gaza. 

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