INTERSOS Humanitarian Organization ETS

INTERSOS expanded its intervention to West Darfur during the second half of 2024 to respond to the world’s most devastating humanitarian crisis. We assist local health centres in ensuring access to life-saving services, including the treatment of acute malnutrition, provision of medicines and medical equipment, training and support for doctors and health workers, as well as hygiene and sanitation services. In November 2025, INTERSOS focused its emergency response to support people fleeing from the city of El-Fasher, providing medical first aid, psychological support, with particular attention to victims of gender-based violence, and ensuring distribution of hygiene and kitchen kits.

Gender-based violence is a human rights violation, a consequence of severe discrimination that is still widespread throughout the world. In the emergency areas where we operate, we register violations on a daily basis, including abuse, physical violence, and rape, especially in conflict zones where sexual violence is used as a weapon of war. Other forms of violence are threats, deprivation, psychological abuse and pressure, as well as early marriage, forced prostitution and forced abortions, linked to coping negative mechanisms in response to conditions of extreme social exclusion and poverty. The INTERSOS’ integrated health and protection approach provides a comprehensive operational response to the needs of the most vulnerable individuals, encompassing a large number of services, from access to primary healthcare, with a specific focus on women and their reproductive health, to psychosocial support, empowerment through training and education, and material economic support to overcome conditions of extreme social exclusion. In Afghanistan, where women are severely disadvantaged and discriminated against, we operate in poor and remote areas of the South, ensuring lifesaving access to healthcare services, with a specific focus on reproductive health and safe births (the country has one of the highest rates of maternal and neonatal deaths). We keep targeting and protecting survivors of gender-based violence, offering material and psychosocial support. In the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where gender-based violence is systematic, survivors receive material assistance and are referred for medical care. Protection monitoring in remote villages documents human rights violations such as abductions, violence, and forced displacement, raising awareness among humanitarian actors and authorities. In Sudan, another country where gender-based violence is constantly used as a weapon of war, we provide first assistance and lifesaving healthcare services to internally displaced people in West Darfur, particularly in the town of Tawila, while we keep assisting refugees in Eastern Chad. Safe spaces for women and protection services are a regular component of our humanitarian Programs in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan), addressing women and all individuals at risk of marginalization and abuse related to their gender orientation. In Rome, Italy, we run a Safe Space for marginalized women at risk of being exposed or exposed to gender-based violence, mostly, but not only, migrants, by providing psychosocial support, access to medical services, training, and promoting job placement.