Critical maternal health services and other programmes for women and girls in north and northwest Syria "have had to scale up massively" following the deadly earthquake last week, a senior official with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has said.
Ahead of a briefing to journalists in New York on Wednesday, Laila Baker, UNFPA Regional Director for Arab States, spoke to UN News from Aleppo, where women are clamouring for peace amid the rubble of the disaster and the ravages of war.
"Without fault, in every group of women, individual or collective, their message was the same: We've had enough. We are exhausted, and we want reconciliation. We want peace. And we hope that during this very dark moment, that it'll be a moment where everyone's hearts and minds are open to the possibilities of peace," she said.
Immense humanitarian needs
The death toll from the double earthquakes that struck Syria and neighbouring Türkiye continues to rise and has surpassed 41,000, according to media reports.
Close to nine million people in Syria alone have been impacted, UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported, and damage is worse in the northwest - the last opposition stronghold - where needs were already at a record high in nearly 12 years of conflict.
More than 4,700 buildings have been destroyed, entire streets have been demolished, and 4.2 million people in Aleppo, and another three million in Idlib, have been affected.
UNFPA is the UN's reproductive and sexual health agency and Ms. Baker has been visiting its clinics in the city, as well as makeshift shelters, and talking to partners and emergency response personnel.
While the level and scale of the devastation is impossible to comprehend, the damage goes much deeper.
Collapsed buildings, dashed hopes
"It's not just the physical destruction that is compounded by over a decade of conflict and war," she said.
"It's the cumulative exhaustion of a people who have been fighting for their vital existence and now feel that the very moment that they're starting to return to some normalcy and see hope and light at the end of the tunnel, the natural disaster, this massive earthquake, has literally crumbled their hopes the way that the buildings have crumbled during the earthquake itself."
Women and girls comprise the majority of people now in shelters in north and northwest Syria, or who have been displaced.
Prior to the earthquake, UNFPA and partners were running several initiatives to provide safe birth delivery and maternal health services, as well as protection from gender-based violence.
