5 Ways Humanitarian Workers Are Protecting Women and Girls Across West and Central Africa
Date:
Across West and Central Africa, humanitarian crises are disrupting lives in profoundly unequal ways. For women and girls, conflict and displacement can bring heightened risks of violence, loss of livelihoods and barriers to services they depend on. This World Humanitarian Day, we look at five ways humanitarian workers and women-led organizations are responding, from protecting women at greater risk of violence to helping them rebuild their lives with dignity.
1. By ensuring neglected crises do not mean neglected women and girls
Sabine Ngaroroum Reoutou Woube, Regional Gender and Humanitarian Specialist, UN Women West and Central Africa Regional Office
Humanitarian actors are often asked to “do more with less”. But as needs continue to grow and resources shrink, there comes a point when less simply means fewer women and girls can be reached with the protection and support they need.
Nearly 55 million people across West and Central Africa are projected to face acute food insecurity this year, as crises across the Central Sahel, north-east Nigeria, the Central African Republic and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo remain severely underfunded.
In north-east Nigeria, women and children — particularly girls — account for approximately 83 per cent of people in need of humanitarian assistance, according to a UN Women evaluation, illustrating how protracted crises can disproportionately affect women and children.
Globally, UN Women’s 2026 Beyond the Breaking Point report found that 84 per cent of women-led and women’s rights organizations surveyed are seeing more women and girls requiring support, while 88 per cent say their capacity falls below current needs.
In underfunded and often overlooked crises, the needs, rights, and voices of women and girls are at heightened risk of being marginalized. On the front lines, UN Women’s humanitarian workers help ensure that gender equality and the priorities of women and girls remain central to humanitarian response efforts.
2. By delivering protection that responds to the realities women and girls face
Humanitarian crises deepen existing inequalities, exposing women and girls to greater risks of violence and exclusion from essential services.
During the 2026 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, women and girls accounted for 53.4 per cent of laboratory-confirmed cases as of 7 June. Among adolescents, the disparity was even greater: girls represented more than 61 per cent of confirmed cases.
“When facing Ebola, women and youth are the most exposed to rumors and misinformation, while women carry the heaviest burden as primary caregivers for the sick,” says Isabelle Pendeza, President of the Women's Network of the Collective of Women's Associations for Development (CAFD) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In north-east Nigeria, nearly 6 in 10 people in need of humanitarian assistance are women and girls. They also account for 55 per cent of people forced from their homes, according to a 2023 analysis by OCHA, UNFPA and UN Women across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States. Displacement leaves women and girls facing needs for protection, health, livelihoods and support to rebuild their lives.
In the Central African Republic, women and girls account for the overwhelming majority of reported gender-based violence cases, representing 96 per cent of the 42,846 cases recorded between 2023 and 2025. In Mali, the scale of need remains equally alarming, with 2.5 million people requiring support related to gender-based violence, while reported cases in parts of Timbuktu increased by 77 per cent in early 2026.
Effective protection starts with understanding what women and girls face in a crisis. On the ground, UN Women humanitarian workers help bring those realities into the response, working with women’s organizations and communities to identify specific needs, protect rights and dignity, and ensure women have a voice in the decisions that affect them.
3. By helping women rebuild their lives with dignity
For women displaced by conflict, protection must go beyond reaching physical safety. It must guarantee the resources, opportunities, and sustained support they need to rebuild their lives with dignity, earn an income, develop new skills, and reclaim control over their future. Investing in their recovery is not only a humanitarian imperative; it is essential to advancing rights, resilience, and lasting peace.
In Mali, H.Y. remembers doing whatever she could to provide for her children:
“Before benefiting from the project’s funds, I used to wash clothes, pound millets and sell wild herbs just to take care of my children. Today, I recalled back my name in the community with a physical shelter. A shelter of dignity, a shelter of peace.”
In conflict-affected areas of Cameroon, displaced women have also had to start over, away from their homes and the livelihoods they once relied on, sometimes after years away from education.
Since 2019, thousands of women, including refugees, internally displaced women and returnees, have found a way back to learning through UN Women’s Second Chance Education programme, launched in Cameroon in collaboration with the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family (MINPROFF). Learning new skills and finding pathways to employment or entrepreneurship can help women earn an income again, provide for their families and rebuild with greater independence.
For Ulrich Martial Bienvenu Sandy, Gender, Recovery and Women’s Economic Empowerment Specialist at UN Women in the Central African Republic, this is what recovery should make possible: moving “from vulnerability to dignity, opportunity and leadership.”
4. By supporting women to prevent violence and build peace
Across communities affected by conflict, women are helping prevent violence, resolve disputes and rebuild trust. Their participation can change how communities respond to conflict and how peace is built.
Recently, thirty women’s organizations from Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the DRC, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger participated in a regional capacity-building workshop on women’s leadership and engagement in humanitarian action. In addition, 205 women-led organizations in the DRC attended a session focused on the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola virus disease, highlighting the critical importance of integrating gender perspectives into the response.
In Tanganyika, women from Twa and Bantu communities helped bring the two communities together through Village Peace Committees and inclusive peace mechanisms, contributing to reduced violence against women and girls.
As Bahimba Nyembo Théodore, Women, Peace and Security Project Officer and WPHF National Focal Point at UN Women DRC, explains:
“Women and girls are not only victims. They are actors of peace and development, capable of transforming their communities when they are supported.”
5. By strengthening women-led organizations on the frontlines
Women-led organizations connect women and girls to protection and essential services, including in communities where humanitarian access is limited.
But shrinking resources are threatening their work. Globally, UN Women’s Beyond the Breaking Point report found that 77 per cent of surveyed women’s organizations have lost staff because of funding cuts, while 45 per cent have six months or less of operational funding remaining.
In Mali, Sidi Lamine Dolo, Humanitarian Affairs Officer at UN Women, faces that gap every day:
“The hardest part is seeing the scale of the needs while the resources available remain limited.”
But the women he works with are central to the response:
“Women and girls are not only beneficiaries of aid; they are also essential actors in humanitarian response and peacebuilding within their communities.”
Where crises persist for years, protecting women and girls requires sustaining the local actors who can reach them and remain alongside their communities.
Acting for Humanity means protecting those who protect others.