A new analysis by UN Women has placed a stark and deeply human figure on the devastation in Gaza, concluding that more than 38,000 women and girls were killed between October 2023 and December 2025.
The report, The Cost of the War in Gaza on Women and Girls, calculates that over 22,000 women and 16,000 girls lost their lives during that period, a sustained rate of killing that translates into an average of 47 women and girls killed every single day across more than two years of war.
While the figure is already staggering, UN officials caution that it is almost certainly an undercount, reflecting only those deaths that could be documented amid the destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, the collapse of record-keeping systems, and the reality that many victims remain buried beneath rubble.
A War That Has Fallen Heavily on Women
What distinguishes this report is not simply the scale of the death toll, but the pattern it reveals. According to UN Women, the proportion of women and girls among the dead is significantly higher than in previous conflicts in Gaza, suggesting a level of civilian exposure and vulnerability that has intensified over time rather than diminished.
Speaking from Geneva, Sofia Calltorp emphasised that the numbers must not be treated as abstract data points detached from lived reality.
“Women and girls accounted for a proportion of deaths far higher than those observed in previous conflicts in Gaza,” she said, adding that each statistic represents “individuals with lives and with dreams.”
The consequences of the war extend far beyond those killed. UN Women estimates that nearly 11,000 women and girls have survived with injuries so severe that they now live with permanent disabilities, many requiring reconstructive surgery, long-term rehabilitation, or specialised care that is simply unavailable within Gaza.
Moez Doraid described the wider social consequences in equally stark terms. The war, he said, has not only taken lives but has “reshaped families,” creating tens of thousands of households now headed by women who must navigate survival in conditions of extreme deprivation while carrying the full burden of caregiving.
Collapse of Daily Life and Survival Systems
The report paints a picture of a society in which the basic structures that sustain life have been systematically eroded.
Across Gaza, UN agencies estimate that around one million women and girls are now displaced, many of them multiple times, living in overcrowded shelters, damaged buildings, or makeshift encampments with limited access to clean water, sanitation, or privacy.
Healthcare access has deteriorated to the point where more than 500,000 women lack essential services, including maternal and reproductive care, while shortages of medicine and fuel have rendered many hospitals barely functional.
Food insecurity has become a defining feature of daily life. UN Women estimates that nearly 790,000 women and girls are experiencing crisis-level or worse hunger, with hundreds of thousands requiring urgent nutritional support.
At the same time, the demographic and social consequences of mass death have begun to reshape Gaza’s family structure. UN data suggests that more than 58,000 households are now headed by women, many of whom have lost husbands, fathers, or adult sons and must now provide for extended families in a collapsed economy.
Ceasefire Without Protection
Although a ceasefire was announced in October 2025, the report makes clear that it has not translated into meaningful safety for civilians.
Women and girls have continued to be killed in the months that followed, even as data collection has become more fragmented. The persistence of violence, combined with the lack of accountability and the slow pace of humanitarian access, has left many in Gaza exposed to ongoing risk.
UN Women has called for full compliance with ceasefire terms, adherence to international humanitarian law, and the rapid scaling up of aid delivery. It has also stressed that women must be placed at the centre of recovery efforts, not only as beneficiaries of aid but as participants in rebuilding and governance.
Political Recognition Without Urgency
The findings align with a growing body of international concern about the scale of civilian casualties in Gaza, particularly among women and children.
The European Union has previously described the level of civilian deaths as unacceptable and warned of the risk of famine, while Pedro Sánchez has publicly condemned the international community’s failure to respond decisively to the killing of women and children.
Statements from the G7 have likewise acknowledged the scale of harm, yet the absence of immediate, direct responses to the latest UN Women report highlights a widening gap between documented reality and political action.
The Human Reality Behind the Numbers
Beneath the statistics lies a reality that is far more difficult to quantify, but impossible to ignore.
In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, one family’s story illustrates the lived consequences behind the figures. When an Israeli strike hit a small concrete home on 8 June 2024, neighbours pulled bodies from the rubble one by one. Among the dead were two children, aged 13 and 10, who had been playing in their living room moments before the explosion.
Their sister, 12-year-old Mazyouna, was eventually found alive, though barely recognisable.
“Her face was ripped off and her jaw was literally hanging,” her father recalled. “My beautiful little girl was completely unrecognisable.”
Doctors in Gaza did what they could with limited resources, attempting to reconstruct her face enough to stabilise her condition. A volunteer surgeon described her injuries as among the most severe he had encountered, with exposed bone and missing tissue requiring complex procedures unavailable in the territory.
Efforts to evacuate her for treatment abroad have been repeatedly denied. Months after the injury, she remains in constant pain, unable to eat or speak properly, with infections setting in and the materials used to hold her face together beginning to fail. Without urgent intervention, doctors warn, she may not survive.
She is not an isolated case. Humanitarian organisations estimate that around 2,500 children in Gaza require urgent medical evacuation, yet approvals to leave the territory have been slow, inconsistent, and often denied without explanation.
For those who do manage to leave, separation from family members adds another layer of trauma. In some cases, children are allowed to travel only with one parent, or without caregivers altogether, raising fears that families may never be reunited.
The war has also produced what aid agencies describe as a generation of child amputees, with at least 1,000 children losing one or both legs in the early months of the conflict, a number that has continued to rise as the war has progressed.
For survivors, the loss is not limited to limbs or homes. As one injured child put it after being evacuated for treatment, “I didn’t just lose my leg, I lost my family and home.”
A Generation Marked by War
Taken together, the findings of the UN Women report and the testimonies emerging from Gaza point to a conflict that has fundamentally altered the trajectory of an entire population.
Women and girls have borne a disproportionate share of the violence, not only as victims of direct attacks but as survivors navigating a landscape of displacement, hunger, injury, and loss. At the same time, they have become the primary agents of resilience, holding families together in the absence of functioning institutions or economic stability.
The report’s central message is not simply that the death toll is high, but that the consequences are enduring. The destruction of healthcare systems, the rise of female-headed households, the scale of disability, and the interruption of education and childhood all point toward long-term societal transformation.
In that sense, the figure of 38,000 is not only a measure of lives lost, but an indicator of a deeper rupture, one that will shape Gaza for years, if not generations, to come.