Gaza, a Middle-Eastern city turned war zone, has become a place where Palestinian women and girls have died by the tens of thousands over the past few years.
That’s according to a new report from UN Women. The agency says that over 28,000 girls and women have died there since the Israel-Hamas War began in October 2023. Roughly 54,000 Palestinians have been killed, and over 100,000 injured, since Israel responded to the deadly Hamas-led Oct 7, 2023, attacks – in which over 1,000 people died and over 200 hostages were taken – with a military blitzkrieg.
That works out to one girl and one woman – all civilians – dying amid bombings and other forms of violence per hour, over the past two and a half years. “Among those killed, thousands were mothers, leaving behind devastated children, families, and communities. These figures underscore the shattering human toll of the conflict, and of lives and futures lost too soon,” UN Women officials also note.
And those numbers may be inaccurately low – research published in The Lancet, a medical journal, asserts that the overall death toll could be 40% higher than what has been reported.
UN Women says the continued conflict has created other hardships, too, for women and girls – and everyone – on the ground. “The entire population in Gaza is rapidly running out of food and essential supplies with increasing risks of famine. This means every woman and girl – more than one million [in all] – is facing catastrophic levels of hunger.”
Plus, they continued, “Women and girls are trapped, facing displacement, rising maternal mortality rates and a severe lack of safety and protection mechanisms.”
Things have been disproportionately difficult for women in Gaza from the start. Back in October 2023, UN officials described a “double nightmare” for pregnant women, especially, as they held (and continue to hold) the strain of carrying and birthing children amid war and a dearth of resources. But war hurts girls and women more in general, research also shows, due to a mix of increased sexual violence and increased caregiving responsibilities, and the mental and physical toll that work takes.
Exacerbating the current state of affairs is the dissolution of the January 2025 ceasefire deal, which fell apart just two months later, plus food, water and supply scarcities resulting from aid being blocked by Israeli forces until just this week. (A blockade that has put some 14,000 babies’ lives in immediate peril, UN officials have reported.)
Officials say there’s only one way to truly fix the problem: By stopping the war efforts altogether, and by allowing needs that have arisen amid the violence to be met. “UN Women joins the UN Secretary-General [António Guterres] in reiterating the call for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate restoration of unhindered humanitarian access, and the unconditional release of all hostages and those arbitrarily detained.”
