By Alaa, Freed Captive
29 June 2025 | 14:15 CAT
2-min read

Gaza Strip, 2025 – In a narrow alley of one of Gaza’s devastated neighbourhoods, a woman whispers to another: “I need your urine sample. They said I have to be pregnant to get the tablets.”

In an increasingly harsh reality, this phrase is no longer strange—it has become a common practice in some neighbourhoods, where non-pregnant mothers resort to buying urine samples from pregnant women to obtain a share of nutritional supplements distributed by an under-resourced humanitarian organisation.

While thousands of families suffer from hunger, many aid organisations restrict food assistance to pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, or mothers of children under the age of five. This criterion, though based on known medical needs, overlooks the emergency conditions that affect everyone without exception.

Umm Mohammed, 34 years old and a mother of four—the eldest is ten—says: “We went a whole week eating nothing but bread and water. I went to the charity, and they told me: You’re not pregnant, you don’t qualify for supplements. I went looking for any woman willing to sell her urine sample so I could prove I’m pregnant.”

It doesn’t stop there. Field reports indicate that some charities require a mother to breastfeed her child in front of a staff member to confirm that she is “truly breastfeeding,” which is a blatant violation of a woman’s dignity and privacy.

According to local human rights sources, around 70% of Gaza’s population faces severe food insecurity, especially after the recent war, the destruction of infrastructure, and the collapse of income sources.

These circumstances are prompting mothers to devise ways to survive, no matter how illogical or humiliating they may seem. The urine trade is not an organised phenomenon, but it is a stark indicator of the humanitarian system’s failure to meet the basic needs of all groups, especially marginalised women.

Civil society organisations are calling for:

• A review of aid eligibility conditions to include all women in need.
• The elimination of degrading practices such as physically proving pregnancy or breastfeeding.
• Expanding nutritional assessments to include entire families, without discrimination between pregnant and non-pregnant mothers.

Umm Mohammed ends her story by saying: “I didn’t want to lie. I just wanted to survive.”