🔗 Share this article The Targeting of Childbirth: How Women and Babies Became Targets in Global Conflicts. Thirty women were seeking shelter in a childbirth facility in El Fasher, Sudan, when the massacre started. Some had just delivered their newborns, while others were actively in labor. On duty during that fateful night, a 28-year-old lab technician, Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, became one of the few known survivors. “I heard the screams of women and children,” he states. “They were killing everyone inside the hospital. Those who could run, fled.” This horrifying event stands as among the worst examples in the ongoing war tearing the African nation apart. Militiamen stormed the facility, allegedly slaughtering more than 460 patients and their companions. Rights organizations have described it as “a crime beyond words,” and a prime example of the vanishing safeguards for civilians living amidst warfare 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 international laws of war, which obligate them to protect civilians, the past year has seen a record number of attacks on healthcare systems. Women undergoing childbirth are particularly at risk due to their need for locally available medical care. Research and compiled data uncover an shocking trend: 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 standard wartime hazards. They form a deliberate strategy of violence against reproduction.” The majority of these assaults have occurred in regions embroiled in intense conflict, where countless of pregnant women are trapped. Mothers have lost their lives, denied medical attention, or compelled to deliver in perilous and unsafe environments. The data also indicates that at least 68 midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists have been slain, 15 taken hostage, and 101 taken into custody—sometimes in the act of delivering babies. A Worldwide Emergency in Maternal Health These figures likely represent a grave undercount, as they capture solely incidents reported in news outlets. In many war-torn areas, reporting is limited. Last year, analysis showed that half of all women who died during pregnancy or childbirth were in a conflict area. This underscores a horrifying trend. Apart from fatalities, these attacks are destroying hospitals and wards, creating a grave danger to demographic stability. Conditions within Gaza In Gaza, the devastating effect on the right to maternal care has been cited by a UN commission as part of the basis for declaring certain actions a genocide. Despite periods of calm, doctors report that women and children are still perishing from a lack of proper treatment, owing to critical shortages of medicine and equipment. Agencies have reported women delivering babies amidst ruins because hospitals were inaccessible. “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. Accounts from embattled medical centers describe births forced underground and skyrocketing stress leading to birth complications. “Russia is targeting us deliberately,” claims the head of obstetrics at a repeatedly damaged hospital in Kherson. Officials from Russia have rejected deliberately targeting civilians. “The reality is, every facility is now a potential target,” comments a medical director in Sumy. “When defensive systems shoot down an aircraft, the falling debris can strike a hospital.” A Culture of Impunity For the more than 676 million women living close to deadly warfare, there are scarce guarantees and a stark lack of legal accountability for those attacking childbirth services. This lack of accountability has created a “atmosphere of lawlessness,” says a human rights lawyer. “Assaults against maternal services, like coerced birth or involuntary sterilization, can be understood as acts of genocide by hindering reproduction.” Other Conflict Zones In El Fasher, the area lacked access to humanitarian aid long before the hospital attack, with malnutrition spiking dangerously, especially among children and pregnant women. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, information is limited by a communication blackout from rebel-held areas. Nevertheless, shelling in Goma struck a baby care unit, causing fatalities among patients and staff. In Myanmar, medical facilities have been bombed and dozens of midwives and patients have been arrested, killed, or injured over the past two years of civil war. The End of Safe Deliveries The majority of childbirth fatalities are averted with basic healthcare, but war destroys healthcare networks. Rights groups note that anxiety is forcing women away from facilities once considered safe, pushing them toward risky home births devoid of emergency care. “When childbirth centers become intentional targets points toward a larger and alarming strategy: the use of violence against hospitals as a means of intimidation and to break societal cohesion,” observes a legal researcher. “Safeguards are not guaranteed for hospitals in war. Under the Geneva conventions, medical facilities are not inviolable if used for acts deemed ‘harmful to the enemy’, which has now become a standard defence.”