Madiha vaguely remembers her family fleeing war-torn Syria. But even a decade later, she still bursts into tears describing their midnight escape across the border to Turkey. She and her family were forced to flee after losing family members in a civil war in which they had no stake.

Little did Madiha—who is now 11 years old—and her family know they would experience another monumental trauma a decade later. This time, it was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked large swaths of southern Turkey on early February 6, 2023.

The roof they built with their own hands collapsed over their heads, killing several of Madiha’s nieces and siblings. “A large piece of brick fell on my mother’s leg, but she luckily survived,” she said tearfully. 

“We must unite our efforts to push back the pushback,” said Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland, at a recent side event during the 67^th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67). Humanitarian crises and forced displacement increase pushback against women’s and girl’s human rights and safety. Jakobsdóttir called for global efforts to recognize this inequity and to fight for gender equality in humanitarian responses.

Links between water and conflict seem to crop up everywhere one looks these days. The Horn of Africa will soon face a sixth consecutive failed rainy season in 2023—its worst drought on record. Not only is this drought a consequence of global climate change, but it has also led to widespread food shortages and local civil conflicts. And over the past year in Ukraine, Russian troops have directly damaged that nation’s already vulnerable water systems, including pipelines, pumping stations, and treatment facilities. These repeated attacks on water infrastructure have not only undermined local livelihoods in Ukraine, but they have also polluted surface waters and threatened biodiversity.

For thousands of years, natural factors like rainfall and temperature helped determine the fate of economies and societies. For thousands of years, humans also engaged in human trafficking and kept one another as enslaved people. But as human prosperity increased exponentially beginning in the 19^th century, it may have seemed that such concerns were relics of the past.

Ukraine and its people will feel the effects of the Russian invasion for years to come. More than 6 million refugees have left Ukraine, another 8 million Ukrainians are internally displaced. Among those most impacted are Ukraine’s women and girls, who have a greater chance of experiencing gender-based violence, exploitation, and trafficking. They also face escalated maternal and newborn mortality rates stemming from lack of services and diminished care, as well as injuries and trauma due to the ongoing conflict. Less visibly, Ukrainians are confronting severe emotional distress and trauma.

Speaking at a session at the 2^nd International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding in February, Guillaume Pierrehumbert, head of the Water and Habitat Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for “a comprehensive rethink of collective humanitarian action” to address the unprecedented civilian crises in protracted armed conflicts.

Greater than one third of all women experience mistreatment during facility-based childbirth. Mistreatment, particularly in humanitarian settings, may include verbal or physical abuse, poor patient-provider rapport, a lack of information about maternal and newborn health (MNH) services for both pregnant women and providers, lack of privacy within facilities, challenges with receiving informed consent from women for medical procedures due to language and cultural barriers, and denied or delayed care. Such mistreatment can stem from historical tensions between populations seeking care and health workers (both foreign and local) as well as systemic mistreatment of providers who are burned out and possibly carry their own biases. Evidence shows that some women delay seeking care, or avoid care entirely because of social fears stemming from negative stigma or negative perceptions of their situation.