The Toll that Wars Take on Women

Jul 31, 2024 | Candice Helfand-Rogers
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For women in war-torn regions, suffering, displacement, pain and death are daily prospects, for themselves and their children – whether they’re soldiers or not. And they’re usually not.

A report released last week by the Human Rights Watch, an international, nongovernmental research organization, detailed the rampant sexual violence experienced by women in Sudan, where a civil war has raged since April 2023 between two factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces.

“The Rapid Support Forces have raped, gang raped, and forced into marriage countless women and girls,” Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director of the Human Rights Watch, told CNN. “[A]nd both warring parties have blocked them from getting aid and support services – compounding the harm they face and leaving them to feel that nowhere is safe.”

Not far north, in Palestine, women are suffering by the hundreds of thousands, amid the Israel-Hamas War that began in October 2023 with a deadly Hamas attack in which over 1,000 people died and over 200 hostages were taken – an attack answered with a military blitzkrieg from Israel that’s killed over 39,000 Palestinians through a mix of bombings and blockades.

A June 2024 study conducted by food insecurity research organization Integrated Food Security Phase Classification shows that about half a million women are grappling with severe scarcities, owing to the restrictions on humanitarian aid in Palestine. Leaders at UN Women, who surveyed Palestinians on the subject, added that “women struggle to protect their children’s physical and mental well-being while bearing increased caregiving and domestic responsibilities,” and will often forgo eating themselves in order to feed their families.

And, an April 2024 study from UN Women itself shows that over 10,000 women have died amid the ongoing violence and famine – an estimated 6,000 of them mothers, who left behind roughly 19,000 children. “Women who have survived have been displaced, widowed, and are facing starvation,” UN Women researchers added. “More than one million women and girls in Gaza have almost no food, no access to safe water, latrines, washrooms, or sanitary pads, with disease growing amidst inhumane living conditions.”