International Women's Day is supposed to be a day of joy and happiness, commemorating women's fight for equality and liberation.
But in Lebanon, it has instead become a day of despair for the hundreds of thousands displaced by Israel's displacement orders and incessant attacks across the country.
Now, they have nowhere else to go, and their children are outside of school yet again while dealing with the hardships of Israel's latest destruction of Lebanon.
Saha Fares, 23, has been sleeping on the streets of Beirut’s Corniche after Israel issued forced evacuation notices for the entire southern suburbs of the capital. She slept on a thin blanket with her two young children and her husband as the cold winter wind blew in from the sea, sweeping along the long promenade by the Mediterranean with no protection from the biting gales blowing across Beirut.
Around her, her two small children, still in their pyjamas, played on the waterfront. As a mother, she is particularly worried about them. One is just one year old, the other two.
“All of life is gone,” she said. “We were preparing gifts for Ramadan. Now we are just fighting so our children don’t die from the cold.”
She said she had no time to take anything with her when they fled, and are relying on resident's generosity for basic necessity.
A few meters away from Ms Fares, one woman said her baby was just 20 days old. She had fled her home without even bringing diapers for the newborn.
It's a story told across Lebanon, of families who had to leave at a minute's notice after the Israeli forced displacement orders.
Across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Sudan to Yemen, women often carry the heaviest weight of conflict. They care for the wounded. They bury loved ones. And they keep families alive when everything else collapses.
According to UN figures, more than 40 million women and girls now live in areas affected by conflict in the region. Globally, women and children make up around 75 to 80 per cent of people displaced by war, meaning they bear the overwhelming human cost of today’s conflicts.
Zeinab, who is in her 50s, from Jwaya in south Lebanon, has three children aged 10, 16 and 17. She has been displaced multiple times throughout her life because of Israeli attacks and invasions - and finds herself in the same position yet again.
"We are so depressed and sad. We are afraid, we don't know what's next," she says, as the Israeli drones looms above in the relatively safe area of Achrafieh.
At least she has somewhere to stay but the journey to find somewhere has been stressful. First she stayed with a relatives in a small central Beirut but is now renting an apartment on the edge of Jnah, not far from the Israeli forced displacement zone in the southern suburbs.
The National sat with a relative as they desperately tried to find somewhere to stay. Prices rapidly increased and landlords were asking for six months rent upfront and a months deposit - a difficult task for people already lacking the funds the rebuild their homes in the villages they come from, many parts flattened by Israeli strikes.
Her children can't go to school during a pivotal moment in their lives, but are hanging on.
"They are good, surviving. They adapt, this is the good thing. They are used to it," she says with a grim laugh, noting this is not the first time the family has been displaced.
"But this is very bad," she says, referring to the fact her children have to adapt every time there is conflict.
She recalls the day the family had to leave less than a week ago, yet again.
"We were scared, the minute we heard (Hezbollah) rockets we left.
"It's survival mode. We are helping each other (with money), we stay in contact in a WhatsApp group. Everyday we watch the news, they bomb here, they bomb there.
"All we want is for this to over and to be back to our homes. That's it. Back to normal."
