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Opinion: Protecting Women’s Health in Cambodia’s Emergencies
- Apr 3
- 5 min read
By Mynea Yi
IPF
Future Forum's junior research fellow Mynea Yi was published in Cambodianess on April 3rd, 2026. Check out the original article HERE, and read it below!
When conflict or displacement occurs, Cambodian women and girls face severe health risks, since temporary evacuation camps often lack privacy, hygiene and access to reproductive healthcare.
Emergency responses are usually framed in a sustenance approach, which focuses on basic needs for survival, such as food, water and shelter. These needs are undoubtedly important but such a framing ignores the different health risks that women and girls face.
While Cambodia has made formal commitments towards gender equality and the empowerment of women, response mechanisms during emergencies rarely translate these into practice.
Most initiatives are supported by international donors. For instance, we can see that the Provincial Departments of Women’s Affairs worked with the UNFPA to provide 220 kits to offices in Preah Vihear province to assist victims of gender-based violence who have been displaced and or affected by natural disasters.
With the recent flood in the northern provinces and border clashes with Thailand, Cambodia ought to be more self-sufficient and resilient in its emergency responses.
We should establish mobile reproductive health teams and institutionalize our gender-responsive healthcare as a core component of our national emergency system. Establishing a national emergency health fund dedicated to women and girls during crises is feasible and necessary to bridge the gap between national gender policies and their local implementation.
Gendered Health Risks in Emergency Contexts
Reproductive health needs do not lessen during crises; in fact, they often intensify. Global health frameworks recognize that sexual and reproductive health services are neglected during emergencies.
Recent humanitarian crises along the Cambodia–Thailand border have displaced tens of thousands of people, resulting in overcrowded temporary shelters with disrupted access to essential services.
According to UNICEF, roughly 153,910 individuals remain internally displaced, with most women, children and the elderly living in overcrowded schools, pagodas and makeshift structures that lack basic services such as sanitation and consistent healthcare access.
These conditions increase protection risks and health vulnerabilities such as increased maternal and newborn mortality, unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, sexually transmitted infections and untreated complications of childbirth. International media outlets such as Reuters have reported stories on women worried about childbirth during the border crisis.
Reports from the Humanitarian Response Forum highlight additional protection and service gaps in displacement sites, including a lack of gender-segregated facilities such as toilets and inadequate sanitation, which elevates the risk of gender-based violence and compromises privacy and hygiene for women and girls.
These documented gaps demonstrate that emergency shelters in Cambodia often do not meet minimum humanitarian standards conducive to women’s health and safety. The absence of privacy, weak sanitation systems, and limited presence of trained health providers compound the vulnerability of women and girls during crises.
The Ministry of Health has already taken steps to integrate disaster risk management planning with reproductive health preparedness. The National Strategy on Disaster Risk Management for Health (2020–2024) incorporates the MISP into national health emergency planning, acknowledging that women and girls are uniquely vulnerable during disasters and require targeted access to sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare.
Despite this strategic recognition, implementation remains uneven and largely dependent on the presence and capacity of external humanitarian actors rather than embedded national mechanisms.
For instance, the UNDP partnered with ActionAid to enhance gender equality in early warning systems and disaster risk reduction, with the participation of locally based community organizations in Koh Kong.
This gap underscores the need for more structured, institutionalized systems that ensure gender-responsive healthcare is consistently delivered across all emergency settings.
Institutionalizing Emergency Reproductive Healthcare
Institutionalizing mobile reproductive health teams are the key to strengthening Cambodia’s emergency health response for women and girls.
These teams would be established by the MoH 72 hours after the emergency and displacement occurred, in accordance with the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) guidelines, to minimize morbidity and mortality among mothers and infants.
Their scope would include emergency maternal care, access to contraception and menstrual hygiene supplies, clinical care for survivors of gender-based violence, and referral pathways for psychological support.
According to the UNFPA, rapid deployment is crucial, since any delays in reproductive healthcare during crises will increase the chances of preventable mortality, vulnerability to HIV infection and sexual exploitation.
Embedding these teams within the national emergency response rather than treating them as ad hoc or donor-led interventions would ensure that gender-responsive healthcare is recognized as a core public health obligation during emergencies, which is consistent with Cambodia’s strategic integration of the MISP into our national disaster risk management framework.
However, aligning policy commitments alone is insufficient without mechanisms to address gaps shown during emergencies. Personal experiences and documented risks highlight an essential gap in disaster preparedness that calls for specific institutionalized financial mechanisms rather than ad hoc responses.
Hence, there should also be a national emergency health fund for women and girls, jointly coordinated by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The fund would provide rapid, flexible financing to support mobile teams, reproductive health supplies, and gender-based violence response services during emergencies.
This is also to reaffirm MoWA’s commitment, as agreed in its meeting with the UNDP in the Philippines, to implement a gender-responsive budgeting system in Cambodia, to be led by MoWA and GSC-MEF.
Our reliance on donor funding often results in uneven coverage and delayed responses. A dedicated national fund would strengthen resources and enable more strategic allocation.
Development partners such as UNFPA and UNDP already support emergency interventions, demonstrating both the feasibility and impact of targeted reproductive health support. By pooling these contributions within a national framework, Cambodia can reduce duplication, improve efficiency, and ensure that women’s and girls’ health remains a protected priority in emergency planning and response.
To put this shift into operation, Cambodia should adopt a phased implementation approach. In 2026, the drafting and adoption of the national policy framework should formally establish the fund, including its legal basis, governance structure, and coordination mechanism between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. This would ensure that financial readiness exists before the pilot implementation begins.
By mid-2027, mobile reproductive health teams would be piloted in provinces most vulnerable to flooding, climate shocks, and displacement, with teams pre-positioned through advance training, logistics planning, and supply stockpiling.
Early in 2028, a national scale-up based on the lessons learned from these pilots would provide consistent and sustained service delivery during future crises.
Including gender-sensitive care as a part of the emergency response system in Cambodia will not happen in one night. However, it is vital for the country to ensure that national gender commitments are upheld when they matter most.
Deploying mobile reproductive health teams and establishing a national emergency health fund for women and girls is a strategic investment in national resilience.
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