INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN HABITAT REPORT
By Wendy Rainbird, April 2026.
Safety of shelter during wars and conflicts.
Many of us are seeing the distressing images of people’s homes being destroyed due to wars and conflicts. When safe shelter is lost, women and girls are put in very vulnerable situations.
Prior to the recent conflicts and missiles or drones’ strikes, there have been people displaced from where they live. We have seen images of huddled groups of women and children sitting on the ground, in places like Sudan. Missiles and drones are still, as of April 2026, displacing people from their homes in the Ukraine. UNHCR estimates that as of December 2024, 8.8 million people had been forcibly displaced. Over 5 million as refugees in other countries, and at least 3.6 million internally displaced in Ukraine. ((Ref UNHCR
Even prior to early 2026 conflicts and wars, “Forced displacement reached a record 123.2 million people worldwide in 2024, driven by conflict, persecution, human rights violations, and instability, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The agency’s Global Trends report highlights the rise in displacement, with Sudan now facing the world’s largest displacement crisis due to escalating violence.”
Other impacted countries include Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, and Haiti — each facing complex emergencies that have uprooted millions of lives. (ref worldvision.org “Forced to flee.”)
World Vision’s new report Out in the Cold examines how this trend will likely impact three of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises as displaced female-headed households from or within Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan will seek to cope with the harsh climate conditions of winter.
The study finds that the rising costs of commodities and winter essentials puts displaced female-headed households at greater risk than other vulnerable groups because of the social stigmas they face, and because help is often out of reach…Female-headed households disproportionately struggle to cope with harsh winter conditions.
( https://www.worldvision.org/about-us/media-center/mental-health-of-women-forced-to-flee-ukraine-syria-and-afghanistan-is-set-to-deteriorate-this-winter-world-vision-warns)
The report found that female-headed households attempt to cope with poverty in the winter months by reducing food consumption, taking on dangerous debt burdens, sending their underage children to work, and selling their underage daughters into marriage or sex work. As temperatures hit life-threatening lows, female heads of household are also forced to make the choice between heating their homes and buying food — or else putting their health and their family’s health at risk by using last-resort heating methods. A situation can have detrimental impacts on their mental health.(https://www.worldvision.org/about-us/media-center/mental-health-of-women-forced-to-flee-ukraine-syria-and-afghanistan-is-set-to-deteriorate-this-winter-world-vision-warns)
When we see news reports of 1.2 million people displaced out of a population of 5 million, as in Lebanon, such displacement is shocking.
The international Council of Women should add its important voice to the Unted Nations, reiterating the Secretary-General: ”International law, including international humanitarian law, must be respected at all times. Civilians and civilian objects must be protected at all times, and attacks directed against them are unacceptable.” (UN Geneva).
