🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Casualties in Worldwide Wars. A group of thirty mothers were huddled for safety in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Several had recently given birth, while others were in the midst of labor. On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, a technician named Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, managed to survive the ordeal. “There were cries of women and children,” he states. “They executed everybody inside the hospital. Survival meant running for your life.” This appalling incident stands as a particularly egregious examples in the two-year civil war tearing the African nation apart. Combatants forced their way into the building, leaving dead more than 460 patients and their companions. Rights organizations have called it “an act of unspeakable brutality,” and a stark illustration of the deteriorating protection for civilians trapped in war-torn areas in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan. A Record of Violence On Childbirth Services Despite every significant nation have signed the Geneva conventions, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of assaults against medical infrastructure. Expectant mothers are highly exposed due to their reliance on locally available medical care. Research and compiled data reveal an alarming level of violence: nearly 300 attacks on and disruptions to places and people associated with childbirth over the last three years, including at least 119 targeted attacks against hospitals and delivery wards. “These incidents do not represent inevitable outcomes of conflict. They represent a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.” The majority of these incidents have happened in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, where countless of pregnant women are trapped. Deaths have occurred, denied medical attention, or made to have their babies in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 childbirth professionals and specialists have been murdered, 15 kidnapped, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes during medical procedures. A Worldwide Emergency for Mothers and Newborns These figures likely represent a significant underestimate, as they are limited to incidents documented publicly. In many areas of fighting, information is scarce. Last year, it was reported that 50% of women who perished while pregnant or giving birth resided in a war zone. This underscores a horrifying trend. Beyond killing women and staff, these attacks are wrecking maternal and neonatal care facilities, jeopardizing the future to demographic stability. Conditions within Gaza In Gaza, the catastrophic impact on reproductive health rights has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for accusations of genocidal acts. Following truces, doctors report that women and children succumb from a lack of proper treatment, owing to desperate lacks of medicine and equipment. UN officials have relayed women giving birth in rubble because hospitals were out of reach. “Direct shelling targeting the wards, operating rooms, and maternity wards,” states the head of a major hospital’s gynecology department. A military spokesperson has rejected deliberately targeting maternity care or seeking to affect birthrates. Ukraine's Ordeal Since early 2022, at least 80 hospitals for mothers and babies have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine. Reports from frontline hospitals describe births forced underground and extreme psychological pressure leading to problems during delivery. “Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Russian authorities have denied deliberately targeting civilians. “The truth of the matter is, every facility faces the threat of assault,” states a medical director in Sumy. “If a drone is destroyed, the falling debris may hit a hospital.” Accountability Evaporates For the hundreds of millions of women living near active conflicts, there are scarce guarantees and even fewer war crimes prosecutions for those targeting maternity care. This lack of accountability has led to a “environment where anything goes,” argues a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, are potentially acts of genocide by preventing births.” Other Conflict Zones In El Fasher, the area had been cut off from humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition increasing drastically, especially among children and pregnant women. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a inability to report from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, killing mothers, babies, and nurses. In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have faced detention, death, or harm over the past two years of civil war. The End of Safe Deliveries A large proportion of mother deaths are averted with basic healthcare, but war shatters health systems. Rights groups note that fear is now driving women away from facilities once considered safe, leading them to risky home births without skilled assistance. “The deliberate attack on maternity wards points toward a wider and more disturbing trend: the use of violence against hospitals as a weapon to spread fear and to destroy community bonds,” says a legal researcher. “Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities can lose their protected status if used for acts deemed ‘militarily advantageous’, which has increasingly been used as a justification.”