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LONDON: UN Women called on Saturday for the ceasefire in Gaza to be transformed into lasting safety, recovery and rights for women and girls, urging that they be placed at the center of all humanitarian and reconstruction efforts.

“Every woman who rebuilds a bakery, a clinic or a classroom is rebuilding peace. Every dollar invested in women-led aid is a down-payment on hope,” said Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action, during a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

“The data is very clear on this: When we invest in women, every $1 generates an $8 return for whole communities,” she added.

Calltorp warned that the needs of women and girls in Gaza “remain at an all-time high,” noting that more than one million women and girls require food aid, and nearly a quarter of a million need urgent nutrition support.

“This ceasefire is our window to deliver, to deliver fast, to stop famine where it has begun and prevent it where it looms,” she said.

The UN official described the toll of the war on women and girls as devastating.

“For two years, women and girls in Gaza were killed at a rate of roughly two every hour. This number only defines the scale of this war, and it will haunt our collective conscience for generations,” Calltorp said.

She added that most women in Gaza have been displaced at least four times since the start of the war, describing the ceasefire as “their first chance to stop running, to find safety, and to rebuild.”

“But winter is coming, and too many still have no shelter,” she said.

According to Calltorp, one in seven families in Gaza was now led by a woman.

“They need aid that reaches them directly, so they can feed their children, access health care, rebuild livelihoods and restore some stability after losing everything,” she said.

She emphasized that both the delivery and design of humanitarian assistance must center women’s needs and voices.

“Because it’s not just about getting aid in and who it reaches, it is also about how we deliver it,” she said.

“If we do not put the humanitarian needs of women and girls at the center, and if we do not include women’s organizations in the response, in recovery, and in the work of rebuilding, then women will be excluded from the future of Gaza altogether.”

Calltorp ended her address by reaffirming UN Women’s commitment to supporting the humanitarian response in Gaza, adding: “At UN Women, we are now working side-by-side with the UN system, which is on the ground fully mobilized to scale up life-saving assistance.”

TEL AVIV: Israel said the remains of another hostage that Hamas handed over the day before were identified as Eliyahu Margalit, as the Palestinian death toll surpassed 68,000 people amid searching beneath the rubble.
Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said Saturday that Margalit’s body was identified after testing by the National Center for Forensic Medicine and his family has been notified.
The 76-year-old was abducted on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, from the horse stables where he worked in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Margalit is the 10th returned hostage body since the ceasefire went into effect over a week ago.
Hamas handed over an 11th body this week, but it wasn’t that of a hostage.
The effort to find the remains followed a warning from US President Donald Trump that he would green-light Israel to resume the war if Hamas doesn’t live up to its end of the deal and return all hostages’ bodies, totaling 28.
Hamas has said it is committed to the terms of the ceasefire deal, including the handover of bodies. However, the retrieval of bodies is hampered by the scope of the devastation and the presence of dangerous, unexploded ordnance.

The group has also told mediators that some bodies are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that more than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed in the two-year-long war. The ministry said the number of dead has climbed since the ceasefire went into effect, with the majority of the newly counted dead bodies being found during recovery efforts under the rubble.
The figures of the Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in the territory, are seen as a reliable estimate of wartime deaths by UN agencies and many independent experts.
Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.
Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross.