Source: Amnesty International –
- Women and girls bear the brunt of collapsing healthcare and mass displacement
- Medical staff describe an exponential rise in maternal and neo-natal health conditions
- Women with cancer and life-threatening illnesses facing interrupted or inaccessible care
- Repeated closure of Rafah crossing further reducing already limited aid deliveries and medical evacuations
Over the past 29 months the devastating, multilayered impact of Israel’s ongoing genocide has pushed Palestinian women and girls in the occupied Gaza Strip to the brink, said Amnesty International today.
Amid Israel’s deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinian women face compounded and life-threatening consequences that have materialized through ongoing mass displacement, the collapse of reproductive, maternal and newborn healthcare; interruption of treatment for chronic illness, including cancer; heightened exposure to disease and unsafe and undignified living conditions; as well as profound physical and mental harm.
Women in Gaza are being denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International
These harms are exacerbated by Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry into Gaza of items indispensable to the survival of the civilian population including adequate food, medicines, medical equipment and assistive devices, shelter material and equipment necessary for the purification of water and removal of rubble, unexploded ordnance and waste. Israel continues to impose these restrictions amid life-threatening delays on medical evacuations and the suspension of registration of international humanitarian organizations that provide essential services for women and girls.
Women have been forced to give birth without adequate medical care, to endure pregnancy and post-partum recovery while displaced in overcrowded and unsanitary sites, and to navigate hunger, disease, and trauma with little privacy, protection, or access to essential services often while caring for others.
“As tensions across the Middle East escalate sharply following Israeli-US attacks on Iran, we must not forget Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the brutal price women and girls have been paying. For pregnant women and those breastfeeding, for mothers of babies and young children, for women living with chronic illnesses and disabilities or recovering from life-changing injuries, for the widowed and the many women who have lost loved ones, for women who have been displaced multiple times, for women on their periods, for women who lost their jobs and access to education life has become a daily struggle to survive amid a relentless cascade of catastrophes,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“Women in Gaza are being denied the conditions needed to live and to give life safely. This systematic erosion of their rights to health, safety, dignity and a future is not an unfortunate by-product of war; it is a deliberate act of war targeting women and girls. It is also the foreseeable consequence of Israel’s calculated policies and practices of multiple mass displacement, deliberate restrictions on basic and essential items, as well as humanitarian relief, and two years of relentless bombardment that have devastated Gaza’s health system and decimated entire families.”
In its March 2025 report, the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel concluded that Israeli authorities systematically and deliberately destroyed the sexual and reproductive healthcare system in Gaza, amounting to two acts prohibited under the genocide Convention: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
Between 5 and 24 February 2026, Amnesty International interviewed 41 women- all internally displaced- including, eight cancer patients, four pregnant women, and 14 women who gave birth after the so-called “ceasefire”. The organization also interviewed 26 healthcare workers across six healthcare facilities in Gaza City and Deir al-Balah, as well as four staff of international organizations.
The catastrophe in the Gaza Strip is multilayered and compounded by devastation upon devastation: ongoing displacement with ongoing air strikes, a devastated and under-resourced health system, and the complete collapse of the economy. The Ministry of Health in Gaza recorded the killings of 630 Palestinians, including 202 children, 89 women and 339 men between the signing of the so-called ceasefire in October 2025 until the end of February, adding to the over 72,000 killed since 7 October 2023. While the immediate threat of famine has eased, hunger remains acute and malnutrition persists, with disastrous long-term negative consequences. With the mass destruction or severe damage to homes in Gaza and with nearly 60% of the total area of the Strip located east of the so-called “yellow line”, which is physically controlled by Israeli forces and Israel-backed local militias, most Palestinians in Gaza continue to be displaced and have lost access to the agricultural food-producing areas of Gaza.
On 27 February an Israeli Supreme Court temporarily froze the implementation of a government decision to suspend the operations of 37 de-registered international aid organizations operating in the OPT. However, restrictions and uncertainty over aid access persist with devastating effects on Palestinians especially Palestinian women in Gaza.
On 28 February Israel closed all three operational crossings into the Gaza Strip after launching a joint attack on Iran with the United States. The closure halted the already limited flow of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies as well as medical evacuations out of the Gaza Strip. On 3 March, Israel reopened the Kerem Shalom/Karm Abu Salem crossing for the “gradual entry of humanitarian aid.” The Rafah crossing with Egypt, which was only partially reopened in early February, remains closed. This whilst Israeli military operations such as shelling, militarized demolitions and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have continued since the ceasefire agreement, inflicting further human suffering and damage to civilian infrastructure.