Amid funding crunch, UNHCR issues urgent call to protect women and girls from surging violence

GENEVA – On this year’s International Women’s Day, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warns that critical funding shortages are leaving displaced women and girls at unprecedented risk.

Reports of conflict-related sexual violence have surged by 50 percent in recent years. Yet funding shortfalls are forcing humanitarian organizations to cut essential services in crisis-affected regions.

Safe houses – once a refuge for survivors at risk of immediate attacks by traffickers, armed groups and other perpetrators – have been shuttered. Legal aid programs, which once offered a path to justice, have been dismantled, allowing perpetrators of violence to act with impunity.

“Women and girls fleeing war deserve to find safety. Yet across the world, they are now at even greater risk of rape and other forms of horrific violence. Without immediate funding, more safe houses will close, more survivors will be turned away, and more women and girls will face violence with no medical and psychosocial support. It’s heartbreaking and unacceptable,” said Ruven Menikdiwela, UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.

The lack of global humanitarian funding is having devastating consequences. In South Sudan, only 25 percent of the dedicated spaces created by UNHCR for women and girls at risk of violence are currently operational, leaving up to 80,000 people without access to services such as emergency psychosocial support and legal and medical assistance.

Programs to protect refugees - particularly adolescent girls - from child marriage and other forms of violence have also been suspended, putting over 2,000 of them at aggravated risk.

In Ethiopia, more than 200,000 refugees and internally displaced persons no longer have access to life-saving services, including a safe house that used to host women in immediate danger of being killed.

In Jordan, at least 63 programs providing specialist support to women and girls are closing down or on hold, leaving 200,000 vulnerable people in both refugee and host communities without help.

For years, programs to prevent and respond to sexual and other forms of violence against refugee and stateless women and girls have saved lives, providing safety, legal assistance, medical care and psychosocial support – critical services for survivors escaping violence.

Yet despite its life-saving importance, support in this area has suffered from years of underinvestment and was only 38 percent funded in 2024. The current crisis in humanitarian funding risks pushing this vital work beyond the point of no return.

On this International Women’s Day, we remind the world that displaced women and girls are not only survivors; they are leaders and changemakers. We must sustain and increase investment in their safety, education and economic empowerment to break these vicious cycles of violence and drive lasting change.

Originally posted by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency