Approximately 75% of the refugees in Türkiye are estimated to be women and children under 18 years old. A quarter of refugees are women of reproductive age. 4% of the population are pregnant. 15% of pregnancies are expected to face high-risks and need tertiary care – cesarean section, operations/ blood transfusion, intensive care.

UNFPA is one of the major United Nations humanitarian response organizations with a mandate to meet the reproductive and maternal health needs of persons in emergency situations, especially ensuring that women can deliver safely in often difficult conditions; to combat gender-based violence (GBV) and to mitigate its consequences; and to meet the needs of young people as they mature and move into adulthood.

For the past five years, UNFPA has scaled up its response to meet the enormous and ever-growing needs of what is the biggest humanitarian crisis today.   UNFPA country office in Türkiye has been responding to the crisis in-country (within the framework of the UN Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan-3RP and Regional Refugees and Migrants Response Plan - RMRP) and in Northern Syria (in line with the Whole of Syria structure)  working closely with affected populations, community-based organisations, local and international NGOs, governments and UN agencies to ensure that the reproductive health needs are met and systems are in place to respond and prevent GBV. As per its mandate, all UNFPA is co-leading the GBV coordination mechanisms, as working closely with the health sector to ensure coordination around sexual and reproductive health.

UNFPA Humanitarian work covers:

Capacity Building (Resilience): UNFPA builds capacity of Turkish and Syrian service providers on the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP), Emergency Obstetric Care (Emoc), Safe motherhood, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Clinical Management of Rape etc.

Service Delivery (Response): UNFPA provides services to refugees through establishing Women and Girls Safe Spaces which act as primary level health care centers with certain clinical and psychosocial services on reproductive health and GBV and also empowerment activities for women and girls.

Equipment and supplies (Response): UNFPA provides dignity, hygiene kits, maternity and reproductive health kits.