Women Deliver Conference. Glimmers of hope amid the doom and gloom?
The Women Deliver conference in Melbourne highlighted the global decline in humanitarian aid amid escalating conflict. Aleta Moriarty was there.
Women Deliver is the largest gathering of women leaders, advocates and activists anywhere in the world, bringing together 6,000 people from 189 countries.
Alongside the activists were former leaders Julia Gillard, Jacinda Ardern, Helen Clarke and Justin Trudeau, who confronted the defining crises of our time: a world at war, the global rise of authoritarianism, the unchecked power of corporations and the systematic erosion of the multilateral system.
came out of it Melbourne Declaration for Gender EqualityA global commitment to rebalance power, resources and responsibility for girls, women and gender diverse people.
A world at war
The conflict was front and center, with representatives from nearly all regions and countries affected by the conflict, including Myanmar, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
according to Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)61 active state-based conflicts were recorded in 2024; This is the highest number since records began in 1946. International Committee of the Red Cross estimates the total number of armed conflicts at 130; This figure is twice the figure fifteen years ago. Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) predictions
One in eight people worldwide is now exposed to conflict.
The burden falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women and girls. UN Women It reports that by 2024, approximately 676 million women and girls, accounting for 17% of the global female population, will live within 50 kilometers of active conflict zones, the highest share since the 1990s.
Sexual violence remains one of the most systemic features of contemporary warfare. During the Bosnian War, rape was widely used as a weapon. Women were systematically detained, forcibly impregnated and held captive until giving birth, deliberately denied abortion, and their bodies used as instruments of ethnic cleansing. The erasure of a people is accomplished all through the bodies of women.
UN Secretary-General’s 2025 Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence documented an 87% increase in cases since 2022; this is widely considered a significant undercount, given the stigma that hinders reporting, fear of retaliation, and limited humanitarian access.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, 38,000 cases were reported by service providers in North Kivu in the first months of 2025. In Sudan, UN Women reported a 288% increase in requests for lifesaving support following rape and sexual violence in April 2025.
These are not just statistics; They are women, each a universe of relationships and possibilities,
not created by brutality and crime.
Zohra Mousavi, an Afghan woman and refugee from Bridge to Safety, said: “We need to think a little bit about what’s going on and what it’s doing, which is conflict. What harm does conflict do to a real person, right?” he said.
“We always forget that, we forget about people’s lives. We talk about numbers. Then it becomes incredibly difficult to narrow it down to remember that we’re talking about people.”
a flood of people
Conflicts are uprooting lives on a large scale. UNHCR It is recorded that there will be over 123 million forcibly displaced people in 2024; This means approximately one in every 67 people on Earth.
One of the most pressing cases is Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where the average income is around $2000 a month. The world’s largest refugee camp, it hosts approximately 1.3 million stateless Rohingya refugees, nearly three times the population of Canberra, and more than 75% of them are women and children.
The camp is one of the most desperate and densely populated places on earth, with 47,000 people per square kilometer and residents living in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters that are extremely vulnerable to landslides, floods, fires and hurricanes.
“Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh… are living in such terrible conditions. I was there last year. Six thousand five hundred education centers were closed. When I went, there were kids wandering every street, trying to look for things to do when they should be in school,” said Noor Azizah, a survivor of the ongoing Rohingya genocide and co-executive director of the Rohingya Women’s Cooperation Network.
“Our people need food, not just to survive. People are now living on seven dollars a month… And because people can’t get by on these short wages, women are looking for work in really dangerous jobs, you know, they’re leaving the camps, young children are doing sex work.”
Candy instead of humanitarian aid
The humanitarian system was emptied just at the moment when the need increased. Withholding support turns into a weapon as deliberate and deadly as any other. In addition, broader aid cuts have systematically targeted programs that support women, whether it is supporting sexual and reproductive health or women’s rights.
Between 2024 and 2025, more than 30% of global humanitarian funding has disappeared, mainly due to cuts to USAID but triggering a broader contraction from other major donors, including Germany and Sweden.
The Council on Foreign Relations reported total humanitarian funding has fallen to 2016 levels and institutions are no longer
We cut off food to the hungry to preserve the dwindling resources of the starving.
Data from the Council on Foreign Relations clearly shows this.
An article published Lancet estimates that global aid cuts could result in 9.4 to 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030. This is comparable to the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 but still receives little attention.
Former Prime Minister Kate Gilmore said: “This erosion of multilateralism is not part of efficiency, it is part of militarization, it is not reform or unification, it is an attack, and all of this must be resisted.” The United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights adds: “The most critical impacts of deliberate fragmentation are borne by ‘we the people’.
(This) death march is not austerity, it is brutality.
The obscenity of the world’s richest man, armed with a chainsaw, celebrating the cuts that cause children to die or enter sex work should disturb our minds. Accordingly ForbesElon Musk’s net worth reached $800 billion in February 2026, exceeding the GDP of Sweden, Norway and Singapore. He added approximately $194 billion to his personal wealth in 2025 alone.
Australia’s aid dwindles
Australia’s aid budget tells a story of quiet retreat. Although nominal figures appear to be rising, the aid budget is going backwards when adjusted for inflation or measured against Gross National Income.
In 2025-26, aid represented just 0.63% of the federal budget; It is a small figure by international standards and continues to fall.
Australians greatly exaggerate our aid contributions. A 2015 survey found 19% of Australians believed benefits made up at least 5% of the federal budget; This rate is approximately 8 times higher than the actual figure of 0.63%.
Attack on humanitarian aid workers
It’s not just humanitarian funds that are being targeted, but also frontline humanitarian workers themselves, who are on the front lines in numbers we’ve never seen before.
The last two years have been the deadliest consecutive years ever recorded for humanitarian workers. Only in 2024, A record 383 aid workers were killedThis figure was more than double the annual average of the previous decade, driven mainly by the war in Gaza and the civil war in Sudan, which caused the majority of deaths.
Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement loses 38 staff and volunteers in 2024 when you’re alone 289 UN personnel killed in GazaThis is the largest loss of UN personnel in any crisis in history. Similarly, Australia’s own Zomi Frankcom was shot down by an Israeli drone while delivering food to World Central Kitchen in clearly marked vehicles. We are still awaiting the results of the official investigation.
Whitewash! What is fraud in the Binskin Investigation into the Zomi Frankcom murder?
“We are in the midst of a complete collapse of the international system,” said Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. “We have warned in the past about the imminent possibility of collapse. What we are saying now has gone beyond warning. We are in the middle of it.”
“We found that there are looters who intend to destroy the system by violating international law and the multilateral system. But it is not just about violating the system and insisting that these systems are dead.”
Foreshadowing the preventable deaths of millions of people has led many to ask how a system so essential to the world’s most vulnerable people could be so quickly and easily destabilized by so few people.
This was one of the central questions of Women Deliver, and a consistent answer from many participants was that the international multilateral system should not be centralized. Take money, power, and decision-making authority away from institutions that can be seized overnight and put it in the hands of the people. folk actors It’s already doing the job.
Connecting each crisis discussed in Women Deliver 2026 is not complicated; This is the choice. The question is whether governments like ours will make more humane choices, with real resources and real leadership. real accountability and the political will to match.
Practitioner researcher in the field of human rights, disability inclusion and gender. He completed his doctorate at the University of Melbourne. Twenty years of working experience in organizations such as the United Nations, UN Women, World Bank, University of Melbourne.
