In her 16 years working with CARE’s Humanitarian Team, Camille Davis has never seen anything so dire as the situation in Gaza.

“And that’s because the situation is really so desperate and horrific,” says Davis, who is now the Senior Director of Humanitarian Resource Mobilization and Planning at CARE, an international humanitarian organization that delivers emergency relief and long-term development projects in 109 countries around the world.

“I mean, we’re six months into this crisis. There is mass displacement, we’re talking about most of the population of Gaza being displaced. And it is a really small area.”

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world, with over 2 million people in an area no bigger than 141 square miles.

Along with the effects of mass displacement, like crowded conditions, low access to safe water and basic sanitation, there is famine due to limited passage of food and other essential needs across borders.

“It’s also a very young population, a lot of children, a lot of young people and children. So, the situation is just heartbreaking. People are already dying from malnutrition…mostly children.”

Despite the challenging operating environment and access issues, CARE is still active in Gaza—doing everything from providing lifesaving medical equipment, safe water, and other relief supplies, to support for maternal health and newborn care, like at their mobile health clinic in Northern Gaza where trained midwives helped deliver 100 babies in the last two months.

As one of the oldest relief organizations in the world, CARE has a long history of working in Gaza. Right now, CARE is one of a few organizations with extensive reach throughout the Gaza strip including in the harder to access North where there is active conflict, and Davis credits this in part to the fact that the organization has been working with Palestinian communities since 1948 and has established a network of trusted partners and vendors that they’ve worked with for years.

“To the extent that we’re making progress, it’s entirely because of these relationships and how embedded CARE has been with communities in Gaza for so long,” says Davis.

The situation in Gaza is bringing attention to the plight of internally displaced people, or IDPs, around the world.

An internally displaced person is someone who has been forced to leave their home because of violence, conflict, or natural disasters, and though they are forced to leave their home, their neighborhood, their village, their community, they are unable to leave the country and remain within its borders.

According to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are 62.5 million internally displaced people globally, which accounts for 58% of the world’s forcibly displaced population. Since IDPs cannot leave the country, they may not have the same protections as refugees under international law.

Read the full article about internally displaced people by Amber Cortes at The Bridgespan Group.