Mideast Crisis Exacts Growing Humanitarian Toll on Women, Girls
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, UN Women Geneva Office Director Sofia Calltorp said the agency "echoes the (UN) secretary-general's welcome of the announcement of a two-week ceasefire by the United States and Iran," while simultaneously voicing deep "alarm at the wave of Israeli strikes across Lebanon." She confirmed that hundreds of women and girls have been killed or wounded in the current week alone.
The figures Calltorp placed before the international community were stark. On February 28, 168 girls were reportedly killed when a strike obliterated their primary school in Minab, Iran — a single incident that encapsulated the broader toll the conflict is inflicting on the region's most vulnerable. Since that date, she said, "hundreds more women and girls have reportedly been killed across the region."
Country-level data painted an equally grim picture. According to national health authorities cited by Calltorp, 204 women were reportedly killed in Iran, while 102 women lost their lives in Lebanon prior to the intensified bombardment of April 8. Fatalities among women and girls have also been recorded in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, the occupied Palestinian territory and the United Arab Emirates.
The displacement crisis has reached staggering proportions. Calltorp warned that millions have been uprooted from their homes, including an estimated 1.6 million in Iran and 620,000 in Lebanon — populations now exposed to acute protection risks, severed from healthcare, livelihoods and basic services.
Food insecurity has emerged as a parallel catastrophe. Across affected countries — including Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territory and Iraq — an estimated 24 million women and girls are confronting worsening hunger driven by price volatility, fractured supply chains and collapsing purchasing power. In Gaza alone, nearly 790,000 women and girls are experiencing crisis-level food insecurity or worse.
The crisis is also placing enormous strain on maternal health systems already stretched to their limits. Even before the latest escalation, an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and 70,000 in Lebanon required maternal health services, many already navigating significant barriers to adequate care. Intensified damage to hospitals, Calltorp warned, will further strangle access to life-saving treatment.
Women-led civil society organizations are themselves under siege. Calltorp cautioned that these groups are operating under "shrinking civic space, escalating security risks, and severe funding gaps" — compounding the difficulty of delivering aid at precisely the moment it is needed most.
UN Women, she concluded, "continues its calls for a lasting and just peace in the region - one that upholds the rights, safety and dignity of all women and girls across the region."
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