International Women’s Day 2026: Protect Displaced Women and Girls, End Gender Apartheid, and Expand Safe Pathways to Freedom

On this International Women’s Day, Displaced International (DI) stands in unwavering solidarity with displaced women and girls worldwide, honoring their resilience, leadership, and determination to survive and rebuild in the face of war, persecution, climate shocks, and institutionalized discrimination.

Today, the world is failing them. At the end of 2024, 123.2 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide, while more than 60 million forcibly displaced and stateless women and girls faced heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and exclusion. At the same time, women’s rights are under growing pressure globally: nearly one in four governments reported a backlash against women’s rights in 2024, and no country in the world has reached full legal equality for women and girls.

“The suffering of displaced women and girls is not simply a humanitarian concern; it is a test of international conscience and political will,” said Ambassador Ashraf Haidari, DI Founder & President. “Across conflict zones, borders, camps, and urban exile, women and girls are not only uprooted from their homes, but too often stripped of education, livelihoods, bodily autonomy, legal protection, and voice. On this International Women’s Day, world leaders must move beyond declarations and deliver measurable action: protect women and girls fleeing gender-based persecution; expand safe pathways and resettlement; fully fund education, health, and protection services; hold perpetrators of mass displacement and gender persecution accountable; and invest seriously in peacebuilding that addresses the drivers of forced migration. The cost of inaction is paid in ruined lives, broken futures, and deepening global instability. Anything less is a failure of leadership and of our shared humanity.”

Women and girls continue to bear the heaviest burdens of displacement. In humanitarian settings, more than 92 million women and girls are expected to need gender-based violence services and support in 2025, while more than 11 million pregnant women are expected to require humanitarian aid. These dangers are compounded by poverty, insecurity, interrupted schooling, child marriage, trafficking, and shrinking access to healthcare and psychosocial support.

One of the gravest examples remains Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s system of gender persecution has become the world’s most extreme women’s rights crisis and a major driver of forced displacement. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are barred from secondary and higher education, and nearly 2.2 million girls are currently denied their right to learn. Meanwhile, Afghanistan experienced an estimated 2.9 million returns in 2025, many under coercive or deeply precarious conditions, exposing women and girls to renewed risks of poverty, abuse, forced marriage, and erasure from public life.

These dangers are being intensified by the global retreat in humanitarian funding. UNHCR has warned that its direct engagement with women and girls dropped to 45,000 in 2025 from 108,000 in 2024, a devastating decline that leaves many without even minimal protection services. At precisely the moment when displaced women and girls need the world most, the systems meant to protect them are being weakened.

DI therefore calls on the international community to act urgently and concretely:

• Recognize gender persecution, including gender apartheid, as a protection emergency and prioritize women and girls fleeing such systems for asylum, humanitarian visas, family reunification, and resettlement.
• Expand safe and lawful pathways for displaced women and girls at risk, especially survivors of violence, women human rights defenders, journalists, students, and female heads of household.
• Fully fund protection, education, sexual and reproductive health, psychosocial care, and livelihoods programming, with dedicated support for women-led and refugee-led organizations on the front lines.
• Protect girls’ education as a non-negotiable right, including through sustained diplomatic pressure, targeted accountability measures, and support for alternative learning pathways where formal access is blocked.
• Hold perpetrators accountable for displacement, trafficking, gender-based violence, and systematic gender oppression.
• Invest in peacebuilding and conflict prevention that addresses the root causes of forced displacement, including war, persecution, exclusion, state repression, and the weaponization of women’s rights.

DI stands with displaced women and girls everywhere, and with the advocates, local organizations, and international bodies documenting abuses and fighting for justice under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. On this International Women’s Day, we reaffirm that displaced women and girls are not peripheral to global policy; they are central to peace, recovery, and the future of their communities.

Join us in taking action. Support DI’s global campaign to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan and to advance protection, dignity, and durable solutions for displaced women and girls everywhere.