Remarks by UN Women Chief of Humanitarian Action Sofia Calltorp following her visit to Gaza

Entire towns and neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Streets that once led to homes now lead to ruins. Everywhere we went, I met with women – In schools turned into shelters; in tents turned into safe spaces; in the ruins of their own homes.

I am not a woman in Gaza, and I cannot claim to know their pain, but I can carry their voices here with you today.

To be a woman in Gaza today means facing hunger and fear, absorbing trauma and grief, and shielding your children from gunfire and cold nights. It means being the last line of protection in a place where safety no longer exists.

It means living through a ceasefire but not living in peace. Women in Gaza told me again and again: there may be a ceasefire, but the war is not over. The attacks are fewer, but the killing continues.

Women also told me they are surviving not only a military war, but a psychological war, one they say is even harder. Every woman I met had lost at least two close family members, children, siblings, parents.

We arrived in Gaza just after a weekend of severe rain and cold. Women showed me how water soaked through their makeshift tents, leaving their children shivering through the night. This is what it means to be a woman in Gaza today: to know that winter is coming, and to know you cannot protect your children from it.

Women also told me they have been displaced countless times – every move means packing the little they have, carrying their children, their elderly parents, choosing between one unsafe place and another. One woman I met told me she has been displaced 35 times during the war.

To be a woman in Gaza today is to face life-or-death choices alone. More than 57,000 women now head their households [1], struggling to rebuild in the impossible. Even with the ceasefire, food is still scarce and four times more expensive, completely out of reach for women with no income.

One woman told me her home was destroyed. Every morning, she returns to the rubble to gather wood, burning the doors that once sheltered her family, just to make breakfast for her children. This is what it means to be a woman in Gaza today.

The endless bombing has left behind another crisis we rarely speak of, but it is everywhere you look in Gaza, the crisis of women and girls newly disabled by this war. Today, over 12,000 women and girls are living with long-term, war-related disabilities they did not have 2 years ago [2].

Like this 13-year-old girl I met who lost her leg in a bomb attack that killed her father and her four brothers. She has been waiting for a wheelchair for months. Her life, her future, everything she once knew, has been shattered by war. This, too, is what it means to be a woman or girl in Gaza today.

Everywhere, women told me the same things: They need the ceasefire to hold. They need food. They need cash assistance. They need winterization supplies, health services, and vital psychosocial support. They asked for work, for justice, for dignity, and for the restoration of their rights. They asked for their children to return to school.

But what I heard from women in Gaza went far beyond survival.

Everywhere, women spoke about their desire to work, to lead, to rebuild Gaza with their own hands. And they do mean it.

Across from the ruins of her home, where her family is buried under the rubble, I met a woman who opened a community oven where she cooks food for others against a small fee, while looking directly at what is left of her life before this war.

There is no clearer testament to the will and power of Gaza’s women to rebuild their lives. And it is in this leadership and this resistance that we must invest now.

That is exactly what UN Women is committed to: standing with Gaza’s women today, so they can lead Gaza’s recovery tomorrow.

UN Women has been on the ground in Gaza for more than a decade. We have stood with women and girls through every crisis, worked hand in hand with women-led civil society, and invested in their resilience and leadership.  

What it means to be a woman in Gaza today should compel us all into action, because no woman or girl should have to fight this hard just to survive.

We need more aid to enter Gaza, systematically and safely. We need the killing to stop. We need the ceasefire to hold. And we need peace, for every woman and girl, for everyone.

To be a woman in Gaza today means holding the line between life and loss, with nothing but courage and exhausted hands. And if that is what it means to be a woman in Gaza today, then it must also mean that the world cannot look away, not for one more day.

Notes

[1] UN Women estimates based on the latest available Ministry of Health fatality data as of 31 July 2025 and statistical modelling.

[2] UN Women estimates based on World Health Organization Report, September 2025.