Women and Girls Safe Spaces (WGSS) — Syria Crisis Response

Since the onset of the Syrian conflict in 2011, women and girls have faced heightened risks of gender-based violence (GBV), displacement and loss of access to health and protection services. In response, UNFPA and partner organisations began establishing Women and Girls Safe Spaces (WGSS) — dedicated centres offering GBV case management, reproductive health services, psychosocial support, legal information and skills training.
The network has scaled substantially over time: from 36 safe spaces recorded in 2015, to 38 spaces inside Syria by 2018 (26 of which offered literacy instruction, reaching around 40,000 young people that year), to 67 spaces by December 2019. In north-east Syria alone, between October 2019 and mid-January 2020, six safe spaces delivered more than 42,000 reproductive-health consultations and over 39,000 GBV prevention and response services, including 189,463 total services recorded at Al-Hol camp and support for 40 deliveries. By 2023, UNFPA reported reaching over 880,000 people nationally with GBV prevention and response services.
All figures come from UN-system sources (UNFPA, UN News, ReliefWeb/OCHA), reflecting the severely constrained space for independent civil-society monitoring in an active conflict zone. A 2024 UNFPA advocacy brief also notes that some safe spaces have since closed due to funding cuts, so the network's scale has not expanded uniformly over time.

Read the full analysis: https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/syrian-arab-republic/syria-humanitarian-fund-providing-safe-space-women-and-girls