Gaza women's long wait for deliverance

As the new year begins, hopes that it will bring succour to the women and children of Gaza have been dashed.

- Lalita Panicker

For the women, it has been a continuum of deprivation, degradation and despair. Various estimates suggest that at least 150,000 pregnant women have been left to their own devices with no medical care to ensure their health or that of their unborn children. They have little food, hardly any safe shelter, no drinking water or sanitation, and things are getting worse. Whatever food is available is hardly nutritious. UN figures say at least 38,000 adolescent girls and 8,000 pregnant women could be facing famine which means that when born, the babies will be low birth weight and the mothers will be at grave risk.

With people fleeing from the constant bombardment to shoddy shelters, women are in ever greater danger. The shelters have no security or essentials, and women and girls face not just the risk of injury/death from the blasts but also sexual violence and abuse. There has also been a marked rise in domestic violence against women in the relief camps, alongside a glaring lack of safe spaces for women survivors of gender-based violence.