UN Woman’s Representative Says that the Situation in Gaza is a War against women, calls for Immediate Ceasefire
Maryse Guimond, representing UN Women in the OPTs, recently came back from a mission in Gaza where she was horrified by the devastated environment And the people’s plight. In her over six years of visiting the enclave, accompanied by the recent trip during the 2021 war, Guimond said, “Getting to the presence I have been to the enclave over 50 times nothing prepared me for the destruction and inhumanity that I saw. ”
Speaking in Jerusalem on Thursday, Guimond narrated her experiences and said that the situation is worse than even her worst expectations of the situation of women and girls in Gaza, which she has followed for years. Speaking to reporters, she said, “it was painful to watch on a daily basis the intensification of the war on women accompanied by increased levels of brutality and destruction. ”
He again highlighted that wars are assured, not gender-sympathetic, and this was the same in Gaza, where one million women and girls were suffering the most after Nine months of war. Lieutenant Guimond said, “They are dying, getting diseases, starving, tired and depressed, trying to sustain families and keep away danger; most of them, every woman I met that was in Gaza, had lost someone or something.
Over 10,000 Palestinian women have died due to the continuing conflict that has now entered its tenth month, as stated by UN Women. Over six thousand families have said their goodbyes to their mothers; nearly one million women and girls – their beloved ones- and their life memories are gone. Guimond commented bitterly, saying that ‘Gaza is more than two million destroyed People, Two Million shattered stories… Women in Gaza live in constant motion – constant fear, constantly being chased, there is no safe place to be in the Gaza’ where everyone in ten is internally displaced.
Around a million women and girls are repeatedly forced to flee and end up in smaller and more confined spaces to get attacked and bombed. ”They handle no money, no property and bear no idea on how and where they are going to reside,” Guimond added. Some of the women she has spoken to informed her that they will never move again because relocation does not change anything concerning their security or survival.
Guimond painted a picture of Gaza as ‘being in ruins and complete lack of anything’, noting that even mosques, hospitals, shops, schools and universities were among the things destroyed. She went on to state how she has witnessed people calmly struggling for their lives in tents and shelters filled with families that are exposed to destruction, fires, and ongoing aggressive actions. Speaking of women, she hardly could recognize them after the war; “I see the last nine months on their faces, on their slim, emaciated bodies,” Cropley shared.
According to UN Women, 557,000 Palestinian women are facing severe food deficits and famine, asserted they are eating “the last and the least,” cutting meals and eating unhealthy food for several months now. But for all these, Guimond noted that women in Gaza embodied strength and humanity in their quest for a meal with hope and unity.
Guimond urged other parts of the world to stand behind women and their organizations in Gaza and women’s representation in the overall decision-making structures. “It’s not what women need, but rather what women do not need indeed,” she said; women do not need to die, do not need to bury their loved ones, do not need to suffer alone.
Like Guterres, Guimond urged his audiences to observe the cessation of hostilities in Gaza, the reopening of all the borders for the facilitation of the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the unconditional liberation of all the Israeli hostages.
