Every year, World Humanitarian Day draws attention to the people who work in some of the world’s most dangerous and difficult environments to assist communities affected by war, displacement and disaster. But behind humanitarian statistics are individuals whose work is deeply personal\u2014women and men who enter crisis-affected communities, listen to survivors and help people rebuild their lives while sometimes confronting the same emergencies themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For humanitarian workers supporting women and girls, the work extends far beyond delivering immediate assistance. It can mean helping survivors of violence regain confidence, supporting women who have lost their livelihoods, documenting the specific needs of women and girls after disasters, and creating opportunities for them to become leaders in rebuilding their communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Nations agency dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment, UN Women, has highlighted the experiences of humanitarian workers in countries including Sudan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic and Ukraine. Their stories reveal a common reality: humanitarian action is not simply about numbers reached or supplies delivered. Its impact can often be seen in the life of one woman, whose recovery can influence an entire family and community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Sudan, Safia Elamin works on humanitarian response and supports survivors of violence amid a devastating conflict that began in April 2023. For humanitarian workers like Elamin, the question of whether their efforts are truly making a difference is never easy to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people they serve are living through the consequences of conflict, displacement, violence and loss. Many have been forced from their homes, separated from loved ones or deprived of livelihoods. Humanitarian personnel must make decisions in extremely difficult circumstances, frequently with limited resources and enormous needs surrounding them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Lebanon, Nour Abdul Reda has described the danger of viewing humanitarian work only through statistics. Numbers are necessary for understanding the scale of an emergency, but they can obscure the individual stories behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her own experience illustrates why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March 2026, Reda was awakened by nearby bombing. With the situation deteriorating around her, she gathered what she could and carried her one-month-old nephew to safety while her sister took care of her other children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only hours later, she returned to humanitarian work, participating in efforts to support families who had been forced to flee their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience created an extraordinary overlap between professional responsibility and personal vulnerability. The people she was trying to help were facing circumstances she had just experienced herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For humanitarian workers, such experiences can make the work emotionally demanding. But they can also deepen their understanding of the people they serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A similar reality unfolded in Myanmar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rebecca, a UN Women programme assistant, was involved in humanitarian response after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar in March 2025. Mandalay, where she was working, was also her hometown. Her family home was partially damaged, yet she continued working to assess the needs of women and girls affected by the disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her responsibilities included visiting communities, listening to affected women and gathering information that could help humanitarian organizations design more effective responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The emotional consequences were difficult to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After long days in affected communities, the stories she had heard and the devastation she had witnessed continued to affect her. Exhaustion did not necessarily bring sleep. Yet the knowledge that her work could help humanitarian organizations understand what women needed gave her motivation to continue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her experience highlights a difficult reality of humanitarian work: sometimes the person providing assistance is also experiencing the disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The challenges become even greater when resources are insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across humanitarian settings, organizations face a widening gap between the scale of need and the funding available to respond. Women’s organizations can be particularly vulnerable when funding declines, despite their importance in reaching women and girls during emergencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afghanistan offers another example of the enormous challenges facing humanitarian teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country has experienced repeated emergencies, including earthquakes, floods and other forms of insecurity, while women and girls face increasing restrictions on their rights and participation in public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a major earthquake in eastern Afghanistan in 2025, UN Women Afghanistan staff travelled into remote areas to understand how women and girls had been affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Araya Arayawuth, head of the UN Women sub-office in Jalalabad, was part of a mission that encountered damaged roads and difficult terrain. When vehicles could no longer proceed, members of the team continued on foot, crossing rivers, walking through fields and navigating rubble while aftershocks continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, they reached women sheltering under makeshift tents. Some had lost everything and had been waiting for assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Arayawuth, the physical difficulties of reaching the community were accompanied by a deeper emotional challenge: seeing people in desperate need while knowing that humanitarian organizations cannot always provide everything required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet she also saw another side of crisis\u2014the resilience, strength and optimism of women who had endured devastating circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That resilience is a recurring theme across humanitarian operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Sudan, Elamin has witnessed how conflict can intensify inequalities that existed long before an emergency began. One example involved a woman who worked alongside her husband on a farm. Although she contributed to producing the harvest, her husband controlled the income generated from its sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The example illustrates a broader problem: women may contribute substantially to household economies without having an equal voice in financial decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
War can make such inequalities even more severe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As traditional support systems disappear and men are killed, displaced or separated from their families, women may suddenly become responsible for entire households. They must provide food, care for children and maintain livelihoods under circumstances that make each task significantly more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet women are not simply victims of humanitarian crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are also farmers, entrepreneurs, mediators, peacebuilders, community leaders and human rights defenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Central African Republic, UN Women Recovery Programme Officer Ulrich Martial Bienvenu Sandy has emphasized the wide range of roles women perform in their communities. His work is influenced by his own memories of his late mother and the sacrifices she made for her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has also experienced profound personal loss. The death of his wife during childbirth gave him an even more personal understanding of the risks and vulnerabilities faced by the communities he serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For him, empowering women is therefore not an abstract professional objective. It is connected to the lives and sacrifices of women he has known personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine demonstrates another dimension of women’s role in humanitarian action: leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the country continues to deal with the consequences of full-scale war, women are increasingly participating in professions that have traditionally been dominated by men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humanitarian mine action is one example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through the \u201cShe Demines\u201d programme, women are being trained to participate in mine clearance and related technical and leadership roles. Their involvement provides new professional opportunities while contributing to the safety and recovery of communities affected by war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olha Lishyk, a UN Women programme analyst working on gender and humanitarian mine action, has emphasized that women’s participation is not simply a matter of representation. Including women can broaden the skills available to humanitarian operations and help ensure that communities benefit from the contributions of everyone capable of supporting recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lishyk’s own life has also been shaped by the war. She lost her home following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For her, humanitarian work is therefore closely connected to the idea of helping people return to safety and rebuild their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across these different countries and emergencies, the circumstances vary dramatically. An earthquake in Myanmar is different from armed conflict in Sudan. The humanitarian challenges facing Afghanistan differ from those confronting Ukraine. Yet the experiences of humanitarian workers reveal a common principle: effective humanitarian response must recognize people not merely as recipients of assistance, but as individuals with dignity, capabilities and a role in shaping their own future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is particularly important for women and girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In crisis situations, their needs can easily be overlooked when humanitarian responses focus primarily on immediate survival. But women’s safety, economic independence, access to services and participation in decision-making can determine how successfully families and communities recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Supporting one woman can therefore have consequences far beyond one individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A woman who receives assistance to rebuild her livelihood may be able to support her children. A survivor who gains access to protection and services may regain the confidence to participate in community life. A woman trained in mine action can contribute to making her community safer. A woman involved in peacebuilding can influence decisions affecting an entire population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The impact moves outward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why humanitarian work cannot be measured only through targets, numbers or immediate outputs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behind every statistic is a person who has experienced a crisis, made difficult choices and is trying to rebuild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
World Humanitarian Day provides an opportunity to recognize the people who stand alongside communities during these moments. But it also offers a broader reminder: humanitarian response is most meaningful when it helps people move from survival toward recovery, agency and leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stories emerging from Sudan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic and Ukraine show that resilience is not simply the ability to endure suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is the ability to continue building a future despite it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in that process, women are not waiting on the sidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are rebuilding homes and livelihoods, protecting families, negotiating peace, gathering communities, entering new professions and leading recovery efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For humanitarian workers, the most meaningful measure of success may therefore be what happens after the immediate crisis\u2014when a woman who once needed assistance begins making decisions again, supporting her family, speaking for her community and helping another woman do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is where humanitarian action becomes more than emergency response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It becomes a pathway from crisis to dignity, from survival to resilience, and ultimately from resilience to leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A news by Alisha Pradhan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every year, World Humanitarian Day draws attention to the people who work in some of the world’s most dangerous and difficult environments to assist communities affected by war, displacement and disaster. But behind humanitarian statistics are individuals whose work is deeply personal\u2014women and men who enter crisis-affected communities, listen to survivors and help people rebuild […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7487,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7478\/revisions\/7487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}