Gaza’s Women and Girls Face Devastating Loss, Displacement and a Deepening Aid Crisis

UN Women estimates that nearly 50,000 women and girls have been killed or severely injured since October 2023, equivalent to one in every 21 women and girls in Gaza.

A mother remembers her daughter Amani for the life she built: her work as a psychologist, her love for her four children and her hopes of seeing them grow. The 35-year-old was killed in an airstrike alongside her children, but her mother wants the world to understand who she was before that day.

Her story appears in an account from UN Women documenting the toll of the war on women and girls in Gaza. The account brings together estimates of deaths and life-changing injuries, accounts of displacement and findings from women's organizations struggling to keep essential services running.

UN Women estimates that nearly 50,000 women and girls have been killed or severely injured since October 2023, equivalent to one in every 21 women and girls in Gaza. Behind that figure are families grieving loved ones, survivors adapting to permanent disabilities and children growing up without the security of home.

Lives Lost, Futures Taken Away

According to UN Women's estimates, more than 38,000 women and girls have been killed, and 11,700 have sustained injuries so severe that they now live with lifelong disabilities. Most of these casualties were recorded during the first two years of the war. The ceasefire agreement that entered into effect in October 2025 has not ended the losses: the account reports that 277 women and girls have been killed since then.

For Amani's mother, remembering her daughter means speaking about her ambitions, her professional work and the difference she made in other people's lives. Amani had imagined a future with her children, with time to raise them and watch them find their way.

Her mother's wish challenges the way casualties are often presented, asking readers to see each person as someone whose relationships, work and everyday joys mattered before their death became a number.

Searching for the Safety of Home

Over three years, the Israeli Defense Forces issued more than 150 evacuation and movement orders, and nearly one million women and girls were forced from their homes.

UN Women reports that almost every woman and girl in Gaza remains displaced, with most living in tents or among the ruins of their homes. The loss reaches beyond shelter, affecting privacy, familiar routines and the sense of safety that comes from having a place of one's own.

Hayam, a programme coordinator at the Women's Affairs Centre in Gaza, lives in a tent herself. Her organization is a UN Women partner providing support to women and girls, making her both an aid worker and someone experiencing the conditions she helps others navigate.

What she wants is simple: a wall to lean against, a door to close and safety for her family and team. Her wishes convey how much of ordinary life has become difficult to secure.

Mothers Carrying More Responsibility

The number of women heading households has doubled over the past three years, with women now leading one in four households in Gaza. Many face deeper poverty and repeated displacement as they try to provide for their families with fewer resources.

Nour's home was destroyed, and her husband, a nurse, was detained. She has neither seen nor heard from him since. She described becoming so absorbed in her thoughts that she sometimes cannot respond to her children.

Her experience reveals the strain of caring for a family without knowing what has happened to a loved one. The responsibilities of parenting continue through grief, uncertainty and exhaustion, leaving little room for women to attend to their own distress.

UN Women describes women keeping their families going, preserving everyday routines and trying to rebuild what has been lost. Their strength should not obscure the suffering that makes such endurance necessary.

Essential Support Is Running Short

UN Women surveyed 14 women's organizations working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Thirteen reported that the needs of women and girls had increased since funding cuts spread through the aid sector in 2025, and the same number said they no longer had the capacity to meet those needs.

Nearly two-thirds had been forced to place women and girls on waiting lists or turn them away. Every organization surveyed reported increases in gender-based violence, poverty and mental health distress since 2025; thirteen also reported an increase in child marriage. These findings reflect the experiences of the organisations surveyed, revealing the pressures facing services that women and families depend on.

UN Women continues to work with women-led and women's rights organizations in Gaza to deliver life-saving and other critical assistance. It also documents women's experiences and perspectives to help shape a humanitarian response that addresses their needs.