Women and girls in Yemen are bearing the brunt of intensified fighting, with rising cases of child marriage, sexual violence and life-threatening maternal health risks, according to a press release by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Speaking via video link from Aden on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, UNFPA Representative in Yemen Francesco Galtieri told journalists in Geneva about Safa, a 14-year-old whose father married her to an elderly man after her mother died, fearing she would be left unprotected if he were killed in the hostilities. Safa has no brothers or sisters. Her story, Galtieri said, reflects the devastating consequences faced by Yemeni girls. It also highlights how the war is stripping protection from the most vulnerable.
Fighting in parts of Yemen has intensified to levels not seen since 2020. Displacement from the west coast and Taiz has tripled, with nearly 300,000 people driven from their homes. More than half of those displaced are women and children. More than a third of displaced families are headed by a woman. In the sites where they arrive, women and girls face heightened risks of sexual violence, harassment, exploitation, and forced and child marriage.
In Taiz city, midwives report that severely malnourished pregnant women are surviving on one or, at most, two meals a day, consisting of “a cup of tea or some bread and plain rice.” Miscarriages are rising, and more women are giving birth at home, unsafely. Of more than 13,000 pregnant women in the Taiz area, some 6,400 have been displaced. Among them, UNFPA expects roughly 1,500 obstetric emergencies. Many are caused by the toll of walking for safety while pregnant and carrying children.
At the Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital, the main maternal care facility in the city, deliveries have halved from ten a day to about five. Incubators for premature babies are down from 40 to ten for want of fuel, and nighttime admissions have fallen to almost zero. Across Taiz, only five of 27 designated emergency maternal and newborn hospitals are even partially functioning. Before this escalation, an estimated three women died in childbirth every day in Yemen, which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Arab region. “No woman should have to risk her life simply because she’s giving birth to a new life in a war zone,” Galtieri said.
UNFPA and its partners are responding wherever access allows. Some 129 community midwives seek out pregnant women in the areas they cover, while five mobile teams deliver reproductive health and protection services. Galtieri warned that unless access restrictions are lifted in the coming days, the Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital itself could close. He stressed that the needs of women and girls are too often the first to be overlooked and the last to be heard. “Their voices must not disappear behind the statistics of war,” he said.